View across the Outer Harbour of Stornoway

Sunday 15 May 2011

Sunday 15 May

A few weather related notes. Today saw the start of the hurricane season in the Eastern Pacific Ocean. Landmasses affected by tropical cyclones there include Mexico and Central America. The Baja California peninsula is likely to see one or more systems, particularly later in the period, in late summer or early autumn. The USA will not be directly impacted, due to low temperatures in the ocean off the state of California. The southwestern states may however be affected by rainfall, drifting northeast from remnants of hurricanes.

Rainfall is what marked out the day here in Stornoway. It basically rained all day, and it was thoroughly grey, wet and miserable. I kept a quiet day, watching a lot of television, some of it recorded previously. One of my favourite series, Ice Road Truckers, ended last Friday. Another Alaska related series, Flying Wild Alaska, about bush planes there, continues on Thursday evenings.

The wet weather will continue tomorrow, but I'll be resuming my local history activities.

Saturday 14 May

A day of mixed fortunes, with broad sunny spells and occasional showers. As I type the first part of this post, the sun is just going down (just before 10pm). We managed 14C / 57F today. Yesterday, I noticed that the old shellfish processing factory on Shell Street had been almost completely taken down. Its smell will not be missed. It had been out of use for the past 4 years. The local brewery had expressed an interest in the site, but demolition was to be its fate.


Site today


Site on 4 March

Although the upper picture has a wider angle, the building in the right of the picture gives a point of reference. That, incidentally, is also due for demolition.

I have spent today setting up back-up blogs (on Wordpress) for my Tropical Cyclones blog and the Pentland Road blog. I don't want to be confronted with the spectre of losing entries on either blog through Blogger's incompetence. Can't say I like Wordpress that much, because it's fiddly and the back-up of this blog failed - only the first year's entries (2008/9) were copied over. Have to try again.