In article , Richard J.
writes

Richard, thanks for all that info. The airport forecasts sound good.
Funnily enough, we were watching a programme on the Discovery Channel
about El Nino the other night and they interviewed a cattle farmer in
Australia who said that he found the pilot's forecasts to be a lot more
helpful to farmers than the farming forecasts, so it seems like a lot of
people think airport forecasts are pretty good.

[snip]
The Highways Agency site says "In high wind situations the system allows
a progressive series of measures to be applied to restrict the speed and
position of vehicles on the bridge, and at very high wind speeds to
close the bridge and send all the traffic through the tunnels."

To me, this means that the east tunnel is probably closed to northbound
traffic as soon as they start sending high-sided vehicles through a
tunnel rather than over the bridge, so north-bound congestion could
build up well before the bridge is totally shut. I think the east tunnel
is wide enough for 2-way traffic, but don't know whether they would
implement that. They do in the Blackwall Tunnel. If they run 2-way
traffic through the east tunnel, that would only reduce northbound by
one lane, which wouldn't be as bad as halving it.

One of my colleagues who lives in Essex says that they divert high sided
vehicles to Tilbury and park them, so maybe they don't always filter
them straight off into a tunnel.

I've got a lot to learn about commuting via this crossing!

Helen

Helen Edith Stephenson helen at baronmoss dot demon dot co dot uk
--
(I'm sure you can figure out what I mean!)
http://www.wuronga.me.uk/helen/