The BBC’s ‘On this day’ (January 31st of 1953) item got me sidetracked.
“A car ferry has sunk in the Irish Sea in one of the worst gales in living memory claiming the lives of up to 130 passengers and crew.”
The item reminded me of the event that unfolded a day after that disaster: the Dutch flood disaster of February 1953 that killed and drowned 1,853 people. Immediately after the storm, a commission was set up to advise the government how to protect the country from spring tides, which accumulated in the project the Dutch call the ‘Deltawerken‘. However, the completion of the biggest part of the project introduced a couple of other problems, most of them environmental. In my younger days when studying civil engineering, I remember the lively discussions about the disadvantages of using and building these kind of giant dams.
Anyway: The English Met-Office has an educational page about that February storm surge, which includes an animated (GIF) picture and a long explanation how the surge became so deadly:
“The surge originated in the waters off the north-east coast of Scotland and was amplified as it travelled first southwards along the eastern coasts of Scotland and England, and then north-east along the coast of the Netherlands. It reached Ijmuiden in the Netherlands around 0400 UTC on 1 February.”
Also note that the document tells how the surge was succesfully predicted by both English and Dutch Meteo offices: the surprising factor was naturally the speed of the surge.