Kind of reminds me of the Great Gale of 1987 (it's a UK thing....).
I came out of my house to a bike that had been blown over, it took me an hour to get to the office (I was the controller at a courier company) where I found the manager of our Guildford office waiting for me because the A3 was blocked by fallen trees. One after another, my couriers called in telling me they couldn't get to work.
There was one I hadn't heard from; he'd been given a pre-book the previous day for a package to be delivered at 9am in Hatfield, and I started to get worried he'd come to harm in the storm. Then, on the dot of 9am he popped up on the radio.... "CC63 clear Hatfield. M25 was empty, did I miss World War 3 or something ?"
RE: Reading: Long Haul 1938