Storms...

On a day like today, we just need to look forward… is due out later this year. We’re exploring the inter-relationships between culture, imagining, energy and creativity. When we were working on the concept for this book, it felt relevant and urgent. Today (a day like today…) it feels more urgent still in so many ways (and let’s not even talk about that war, which we’ll do another day).

I live in SW England, more specifically on the South Devon coast where disaster struck during the seemingly endless set of storms in January and February of this year. Those storms were coming from the ‘wrong direction’; the prevailing wind here (and therefore the prevailing direction of storm fronts) is from the southwest. This year was different: a high pressure system got stuck over Scandinavia; it not only bent the jet stream but slowed down storm fronts so that not only were they striking us from the wrong direction, but they moved slowly, enhancing their ability to wreak havoc. Coinciding with spring high tides, the whipped up sea and hurricane force winds pounded the coastline hard hard hard, particularly here in Start Bay (where there is another long story not to be told today of extraction from the sea bed increasing susceptibility to storm damage).

That out-of-shape jet stream is one of the recognised side effect of climate change which is destabilising the jet stream and making it behave oddly. This is not ‘just weather’. If you struggle with this, search for ‘Deep dive: why the jet stream is delivering exceptional rain across Europe’.

This terrifying series of storms severely damaged homes and livelihoods but also took the road connecting the market towns of Kingsbridge and Dartmouth. Took, as in literally demolished the entire width of the roadway for about a quarter of a mile. Because this, they say, is the first ‘A’ road to be lost to changing weather patterns here in the UK, it made national and international news. But these stories focused pretty much exclusively on damaged lives and damaged property. Nary a word was spoken about causality:  climate change and the urgency of the changes becoming more palpable day by day, storm by storm. The now proposed £50m price tag to ‘fix’ a problem caused by something we are making little effort to fix may or may no be forthcoming, but also seems to slightly miss the point. Or entirely miss the point.

I have lived along this coastline for 13 years and in that time have seen metres of land (not millimetres, not centimetres) lost to the sea. This road sits on a narrow sand bar that creates a divide between the saltiness of Start Bay and Slapton Ley, the largest natural frszeshwater lake in southwest England –  one of the most protected sites in the UK. This fragile tarmac ribbon has suffered significant damage three times since I have lived here, the most recent in 2013 when major repairs had to be undertaken including moving part of the road slightly away from the sea. At that time the money was spent in the declared expectation that no further breach would be likely for ’50 to 100 years’. It took a little over ten, and this time the destruction is total. Houses in the adjacent village of Torcross have been badly damaged, some already condemned. It’s not the first time, but it is – by far – the most violent and the most extreme; this despite the sea defences built 50 years ago and added to just a few years ago.

It’s axiomatic that facts rarely get in the way of a good story. So, too, with climate change. The clearer the science becomes, the more palpable the immediate effects, the further we put our heads into the metaphoric sand. In this instance, we worry about how the unfortunate folk who live in Torcross (although to be honest a large percentage of the houses on the sea front are holiday cottages, not lived in by anyone), we worry about  how Olivia and Noah will get to school, we worry about how the pub will survive. We don’t, it seems, worry about the underlying causes of this devastation and the increasing urgency of addressing them.

After the first storm to hit, Storm Ingrid, undermined the road at the end of the village in January, heavy equipment arrived, bearing gifts of massive boulders dumped between the sea and the road to provide added protection (the sea defences only protect the houses in the village, not the road which is at its closest point to the sea just at the end of the village). Next came Storm Chandra – she brazenly picked up these massive pieces of rock as if they were pebbles and flung them on to the roadway, arguably a cure significantly worse than the disease. Goretti finished the road off as well as the adjacent car park well known because of the WWII tank that resides therein, a testament to the folly of war, or a memorial to hundreds of lives lost preparing for D-Day, depending on your perspective. 

The power of the sea at these times is beyond imagining. We might be able to measure that force objectively but we just can’t grasp it subjectively, it is beyond our limited imagination.

Does this book seem puny in the face of such overwhelming and potent forces? Perhaps. But we believe that art, creative thinking, imagining, story-telling, engagement can more subtly and gently make a case for change. We can only slow and mitigate climate change if we live our lives profoundly differently – and the impetus to live our lives that differently can only come from within, from one person recognising that something profound needs to change, and persuading their neighbour and their friend. If we won’t be told then understanding must come from within. And that’s what artists are good at. And that’s what this book will celebrate, explicate and illuminate.

We have an open call for submissions with a deadline of May 9. Read more at https://artearthbooks.com/a-day-like-today/. Get involved. We’d love you to,

Richard Povall

Stokenham, March 25, 2026