NO ONE blamed climate change for the apocalyptic weather 20 years ago in the Great Storm of October 1987. They were too busy blaming Michael Fish.

The BBC weatherman's rebuttal of a viewer's suggestion that a hurricane 'was on the way' has become the most famous weather broadcast in British television history.

In his evening bulletin on October 15, he assured everyone not to worry and said Spain and France would be bearing the brunt of the strong winds forming in the Atlantic.

But overnight, severe storms battered the British Isles, with the south of England particularly badly hit. The main feature of the storm was the high winds, which reached 100mph in some areas. Although the gusts were locally hurricane-force in strength, these were not sufficiently widespread to make it a hurricane officially. A storm of such magnitude last occurred in England in 1703, according to the Met Office.

Eighteen people died and hundreds more were injured. An estimated 15 million trees had been uprooted and hundred of thousands of homes were left without power. The clear-up and repairs cost a billion pounds. It has become the country's most infamous weather event of the 20th century.

In our county, the brunt of the storms was borne by East Dorset, where two firemen, Ernest Gregory, 47, and Graham White, 46, were killed as they returned from a call-out and a falling oak tree smashed into the cab of their fire engine at Highcliffe, Christchurch. While in Waterford Road, Christchurch, 90 pensioners were trapped at their flats complex when high winds prevented their evacuation after roofs were blown off.

In the west of the county, widespread damage was reported, with roads blocked by falling trees, hundreds of slates blown from roofs, walls demolished and yachts torn adrift and wrecked. Several trees were felled by the winds in the Broadmayne area, blocking roads in and around the village, while the Preston Beach Road was blocked as high waves dumped shingle over the sea wall, making the road impassable.

A large section of the railway station wall in Ranelagh Road, Weymouth, collapsed, causing thousands of pounds worth of damage to parked cars. Shops along the Esplanade had their canopies ripped to shreds and windows blown in, and an 18ft-high glass section of the derelict Gloucester Hotel's frontage was smashed.

The fishing boat Sandy Rose sank in Weymouth Harbour, while the 28ft yacht Thuella was torn from its moorings in Portland Harbour and badly damaged when it ran aground near Wellworthys.

The storm made heroes out of the crew of a Weymouth Lifeboat who tackled 40ft waves and hurricane-force winds to rescue five people in a catamaran in mountainous seas off Portland Bill on October 16.

During the clear-up operation, coastguards at Portland described the gales as 'one of the fiercest storms we have ever known' and said that winds had at one point gusted up to 83mph.

A spokesman added: "We've had reports right the way along the coast from Weymouth to Poole of vessels which have run aground, but no injuries have been reported so far."

In the aftermath of the storm, on October 17, a Southern Electricity Board spokesman said that about 12,000 customers in the South Dorset area were still without power.

West Dorset, however, was considered to have had a narrow escape; newspaper coverage at the time comments: "We may have been battered, but we weren't flattened - as they were in Sussex and Kent."

As for poor old Michael Fish, his famous line that there wouldn't be a hurricane was actually correct. It has since transpired he was referring to a tropical cyclone in the West Atlantic and trying to reassure someone who was flying out to Florida on holiday. He went on to warn viewers in the UK to 'batten down the hatches', saying it would be 'very windy' across the south of England. However, his name seems destined to be forever associated in the public's mind with the worst storm in living memory.