Thursday 30 September

The last day of the month, with reasonable weather - there is quite a bit of brightness about, but the clouds are announcing the advent of very windy conditions through tomorrow. Tragedy has continued to affect Lochaber, the area west of Fort William. The body of a man has washed up on a beach in the Isle of Canna, prompting fears that it might be that of a missing yachtsman, Neil Mackenzie. His yacht was found near Arisaig last week. Last year, a diver who went missing at Ardnamurchan turned up on a beach on the southern coast of the Isle of Skye. No confirmation of the identity of the dead man, found in Canna, has been issued.

It is two years ago today that AOL announced they were going to withdraw their Journals service, heralding the end of J-land as we know it. We had just over four weeks to relocate elsewhere, as AOL was not even prepared to archive the journals. By Hallowe'en, they were all pulled off the Net. Many journallers did not continue on other platforms, such as Blogger or Wordpress. Facebook and Twitter have taken over parts of the function that AOL abandoned.

Wednesday 29 September

The day started very wet, but when I went to the post office, at 11 am, the rain had stopped. The sun came out after 4 o'clock, following a trip to the library for more tribute stories from the Stornoway Gazette. I also unearthed a story of a message in a bottle, that had been washed up somewhere in 1917. It had come from one of the Canaries, where three island sailors had been shipwrecked in 1916. The message requested a lady in Stornoway to be contacted to be told that her nephew was ok. The only thing was that the name given was not that of one of her nephews. The other story concerned the sailor who was found dead on the deck of the barque (a sailing ship) one morning. His remains were taken ashore at Stornoway and buried at Sandwick. The ship, the Yuba, was torpedoed five weeks later; the U-boat that fired the fatal torpedoes ran into a mine off Terschelling, Holland, at the end of August 1917 and was sunk with all hands.

I end with some of today's pictures.



Here comes the sun



A still morning


Awaiting the schoolbus

Tuesday 28 September

Overcast today, and after about 3pm, the rain started. Not amounting to very much, and the rainfall radar shows it's only a relatively narrow and patchy band of precipitation moving across from the Atlantic. Looking at the weathercharts, it appears that we're in for a gale on Friday, which could well last into the weekend.

I've been into the library this afternoon to look at ancient copies of the Stornoway Gazette (our local weekly paper) from 1917. These have been put on microfiche, and I'm looking for tributes to island men who had fallen in battle during the First World War. There is a steady trickly of these, and I'm adding them to my WW1 tribute site "Faces from the Lewis War Memorial".

Looking across the water at the Arnish Fabrication Yard, the barge that came in on Sunday is now in place alongside the quay at Glumag Harbour, and a crane is moving stuff either to or from the barge. The Yard makes items for the renewable energy industry (e.g. windturbines).

Monday 27 September

A very nice day, full of sunshine - until highlevel cloud moved in and obscured the sun. After an overnight low of only +1C, the sun managed to push the mercury up to 14C / 57F this afternoon, and out of the wind it was quite pleasant. Operation Skip is now over, following the removal of said implement to the dump. It's a quiet autumn day here in the Western Isles, with the only major news item (locally) being the community buy-out bid being launched by the villagers of Mangersta, (35 miles west of Stornoway) whose number stands at 29. They seek control of their common land, which stretches to 9,000 acres to the south and east of their township (view below courtesy Google Street View).

Sunday 26 September

A bright and sunny day, with some high cloud about but not very warm - 12C/54F at the moment. It will grow a bit milder later in the new week. Another tug-with-barge has turned up at the Arnish Fabrication Yard; I could not properly see it, as the sun was in my eye when I tried to have a look. Will carry on with the transcription of the Napier Commission Reports later.

Sunday 26 September


Saturday 25 September


Friday 24 September

Saturday 25 September

Another day like yesterday, although I should mention that it has grown rather colder than of late; daytime maximum temps are not much above 11C at the moment. Went into the library to scour the Stornoway Gazette of 1917 for tributes to those who fell in the First World War at the time. The month of January 1917 saw some very harsh weather in Lewis, with heavy snow and strong northeasterly winds.
I am continuing my transcripts of the Napier Commission's reports on Shetland, with a foray out to Foula, west of the Shetland Mainland.What remains is twenty submissions to be taken at Lerwick, from mainland Shetland and Whalsay.

Lone yachtsman Neil Mackenzie is still being sought near Arisaig, following the find of his yacht at Rhu on Thursday. The family have expressed their mounting concerns, after an all day search today in the area between Skye and Ardnamurchan yielded nothing.

Friday 24 September

Quite a nice day in terms of weather, with spells of brightness following in the wake of early showers. Spent the afternoon transcribing the Hillswick section of the Napier Commission's report for Shetland.



Down the West Coast of mainland Scotland, a search is continuing for a lone yachtsman, whose vessel (the Solitaire) was found abandoned at Rhu near Arisaig following an alert on Thursday. 59-year old Neil Mackenzie had not been in touch with his wife for a long period of time, contrary to previous habits. Mr Mackenzie was an experienced sailor, and the emergency services were out in force to look for him. (Image courtesy Press & Journal, photograph Sandy McCook)


Greenpeace is mounting a protest on a ship which was set to leave for the oilfields of the Atlantic, west of Shetland. They have affixed a survival pod to an anchor chain, to prevent the Stena Carron from departing. Legally, logistically and practically it is very difficult to dislodge the protesters; it would appear that an imminent gale might be more helpful to end the protest.(Image Greenpeace, via BBC)
 

Thursday 23 September

A gradual improvement in the weather, with rain and showers fading through the day. We saw the sun again before midday, although it did remain quite breezy. The filling of the skip continues.

Another windfarm is on the cards for the Isle of Lewis, something that nobody really wants. I am an opponent (as if the previous sentence hadn't already made that crystal clear), and think that other forms of renewable energy should be tapped around this island, other than windfarms which are a blot on the landscape. People come to visit Lewis because of the desolate wilderness quality of the interior.



On the Barvas Moor road


Lochganvich


Achmore


From the Barvas Hills

Wednesday 22 September

The first day of autumn brought the wettest day for a long time. Heavy rain all day. No, Mr BBC Announcer, it was NOT a lovely day in the Western Isles. We'll be able to pull a long nose at those in England who were basking in Indian Summer temperatures of 25C today. You'll get our rain tomorrow, so there. Thrown more stuff in the skip today.

Talking of India, I was completely stunned by the news that the athletes' accommodation for the Commonwealth Games in Delhi was unfit for human habitation. You'd expect a major nation like India to pull out all the stops to make it work, particularly as they've had seven years to prepare. There is a chance the games are called off altogether. The games are scheduled to start on 3 October.

During the 23 years that I have been visiting (and latterly staying) in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, the number of German visitors has always surprised me. It would appear that the advent of Nazism and communism has something to do with it. Seems we all need some culture to identify with, and when German culture was poisoned by Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin, the ordinary folk turned to Gaelic culture. Interesting.

I'm not a great football afficionado, but feel disappointed that the two main teams in the north of Scotland lost their cup matches tonight. Ross County (from Dingwall) lost 1-2 to Dundee United, and Inverness Caledonian Thistle were clobbered 6-0 by Celtic Glasgow.

Tuesday 21 September

Overcast and windy, with rain commencing after 6 o'clock. More skip-filling today, or to be precise: preparations to chuck more into the skip. I've completed the first major section of the Napier report into Shetland, with findings from the island of Yell. The main complaint was poor housing and insufficient land. I've so far covered 1600 out of the 4000 questions from Shetland.

I could not believe my eyes, when I read on the STV (Scottish commercial television) twitterfeed that a leading clergyman felt that soldiers should not be decorated for killing people. Excuse me, isn't it a soldier's job to kill if that's what it takes to defend your country? The comment came amidst a debate on euthanasia, currently subject to debate in the Scottish Parliament.

If you're on Twitter, you will have seen the kingsized letters on your screen this morning, which spelled trouble: on hovering your mouse cursor over them, this opened your browser to all sorts of nasties. It took twitter.com several hours to plug the hole.

Monday 20 September

An overcast and cold day, although it has thankfully remained dry. Bermuda is slowly reappearing from under the canopy of Igor, having suffered not much worse than force 11 winds with gusts in excess of 70 mph. I've spent the day assisting someone in a major clear-out, involving a skip. And I've started transcribing more of the Napier Commission's Report, this time for Shetland.

I was going through my email contact file this evening, and I came across two names that I'd like to hear more about. Has anyone heard of Raven, who used to write "Rebuke the World", back in the days of AOL? And I'm also wondering about "chatzeekay" (Cathy), who had suffered braindamage as a result of physical abuse. She could not cope with the switch-over to Blogger, two years ago, and has disappeared under the radar since then.

Sunday 19 September

A dreich Sunday in Stornoway - rain all day. I'm monitoring the weather conditions in Bermuda, a couple of thousand miles southwest of here, where hurricane Igor is bearing down. As I'm typing this, the sustained windspeeds are 50 mph, with gusts to 65 mph. The centre of the hurricane will pass within about 20 miles of Bermuda, with maximum sustained winds of 85 mph, gusting in excess of 100 mph. I'm also keeping an eye on the Bermuda section of stormcarib.com, where local correspondents continue to post updates - for as long as it's safe to do so. Many have already lost power, and cannot go outside to start generators. Keep them in mind for this Igor Sunday.

Bermuda in normal mode, courtesy www.bermudastyles.com.

Saturday 18 September

Finished the transcription of the Napier Report on Skye, with the last of the appendices now also on the site. It's not a straightforward exercise in copy & paste, this also requires a lot of cleaning up of OCR problems. Before I move on to the transcripts for Orkney and Shetland, I'll compile an index for both Skye and the Western Isles.

Hurricane Igor is closing in on Bermuda, with rain starting to fall there within the last hour. Although the hurricane is weakening, the storm is still expected to pack winds close on 100 mph near its centre. Igor is a very large system, with galeforce winds extending to nearly 350 miles from the centre. After the weekend, this hurricane will transform into an "ordinary" depression to the east of Newfoundland. It remains to be seen whether it will move east towards Europe, or north to Greenland.

Roma in France

Roma in this instance refers to a category of travelling people, who have migrated from Romania and Bulgaria to France to evade persecution. It would appear that, judging by recent developments, they have gotten from the frying pan into the fire.

In July, a French policeman shot and killed a young Roma man. The next day, a police station and several cars were torched by Roma people. French president Sarkozy called a cabinet meeting and decided to clear 300 illegal camps, occupied by Roma, and evict their occupants from the country.

This policy has sparked scathing criticism from within the European Union, leading to an equally scathing backlash from M. Sarkozy. The EU has stated that this policy harks back to the dark days of the Second World War, an assertion not exactly appreciated by the French presidency.

Both in the UK and elsewhere on the European continent, the sight of encampments of travelling folk of varying description is common. Their are not usually appreciated by nearby residents, on account of alleged increased levels of petty crime and public disorder. However, evicting one group out of the country as a measure to pander to public opinion has debased Mr Sarkozy to the levels of Maréchal Pétain, who headed up the puppet regime in Vichy France during World War II.

Friday 17 September

A bright but cold day, with a veil of high-level cloud leaving the sky looking white. Adverse weather conditions kept our ferry in Ullapool, on the mainland, overnight. The Isle of Lewis has now made her customary lunchtime call into Stornoway and is on its way across to Ullapool as I type. It would appear the freight ferry Muirneag is back on duty after being off for technical reasons. This caused problems for the freight, bound for the islands, which is normally carried by the Muirneag. Calmac, the ferry company, has diverted that traffic through Skye to go on the Harris ferry.

The war memorial in the district of Uig in Lewis has been selected as the best kept village memorial not-in-a-garden in Scotland. I have not (yet) found a link, it is news from the twitter feed of the Uig historical society.


overlooking this view

Hurricane update - 17 September

Hurricane Karl is now a category III hurricane, approaching Mexico between La Cruz and Punta El Lagarto on the Gulf of Mexico. The storm continues to strengthen and could be at category IV strength, with winds of 135 mph by landfall within the next 12 to 24 hours. Apart from the high winds, the storm will also bring a storm surge, with tidal levels 12 to 15 feet above normal, with large and destructive waves to the area of landfall and points to the north. Six-hourly updates are provided through the NHC website.

I copy the effects a category IV hurricane has on the area of landfall - this relates to the USA; I cannot ascertain what the conditions in eastern Mexico are like.

Winds: 131-155 mph
Catastrophic damage will occur
There is a very high risk of injury or death to people, livestock, and pets due to flying and falling debris. Nearly all older (pre-1994) mobile homes will be destroyed. A high percentage of newer mobile homes also will be destroyed. Poorly constructed homes can sustain complete collapse of all walls as well as the loss of the roof structure. Well-built homes also can sustain severe damage with loss of most of the roof structure and/or some exterior walls. Extensive damage to roof coverings, windows, and doors will occur.

Large amounts of windborne debris will be lofted into the air. Windborne debris damage will break most unprotected windows and penetrate some protected windows. There will be a high percentage of structural damage to the top floors of apartment buildings. Steel frames in older industrial buildings can collapse. There will be a high percentage of collapse to older unreinforced masonry buildings.

Most windows will be blown out of high-rise buildings resulting in falling glass, which will pose a threat for days to weeks after the storm. Nearly all commercial signage, fences, and canopies will be destroyed. Most trees will be snapped or uprooted and power poles downed. Fallen trees and power poles will isolate residential areas. Power outages will last for weeks to possibly months. Long-term water shortages will increase human suffering.

Most of the area will be uninhabitable for weeks or months. Hurricane Charley (2004) is an example of a hurricane that brought Category 4 winds and impacts to coastal portions of Punta Gorda, Florida with Category 3 conditions experienced elsewhere in the city.

Hurricane update - 16 September

Three hurricanes at the same time in the Atlantic tonight, for the first time in 12 years. This is the eighth time in recorded history that this has occurred.

Karl is headed for Mexico, with landfall expected between Tampico and Veracruz with winds of about 85 knots (near 100 mph) and a projected rainfall total of 5 to 15 inches (125 to 375 mm).


Julia is not posing a threat to land, being located 2000 miles southwest of the Azores, and its proximity to Igor (below) will bring about its demise after the weekend.

Igor has slowly weakened from a top intensity of 125 knots (that's a trifling 140 mph) down to 110 knots (125 mph) this evening as it heads towards Bermuda. This island will feel the effects of Igor during Saturday.

NASA/GSFC provided this below image, showing (left to right), Karl, Igor and Julia.  Jeff Masters' Wunderblog supplied some of the information relayed.

Thursday 16 September

A breezy but bright day, with the odd shower about. Isles FM made my day with the clanger of the week: "Pope Benedict XVI is arriving in Stornoway today for a state visit...". The newsreader realised his mistake, but kept going without saying a word about it - but his embarassment was audible in his voice. His colleague, who took over after the weatherforecast, mentioned that you can always tell when someone hasn't had their morning coffee.

The Pope has arrived at Edinburgh, 200 miles southeast of Stornoway, for a four-day state visit to the United Kingdom. He was greeted at the airport by the Duke of Edinburgh, the Queen's husband. After a speedlimit-breaking drive from the airport, the pontiff arrived at Holyrood House, the Queen's official residence in Edinburgh, where he was greeted by Her Majesty, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the UK Deputy Prime Minister, the Scottish First Minister and other senior officials. Later, Pope Benedict will be driven through Edinburgh on his way to Glasgow, 45 miles to the west, where he will conduct mass on Friday. A Gaelic choir from the Uists will sing at that event.

Wednesday 15 September

A day of short but very sharp showers, interspersed with pleasant warm sunshine. Went to the cemetery at Gress during the afternoon, where I located another seven war-related gravestones. I took my time going through the graveyard, which is fairly extensive. It now gets dark before 8pm, which is getting depressing.


Gress during a shower


Gress Beach


Gress Village


Tiumpan Head Lighthouse from Gress


The village of Back across the Gress River

Chatlog - September 2006

Four years ago (on 17 September 2006), we held a J-land chat on good ole AOL. I was going through my records, and I found the log for that chat. Taking part were 40 journalers (ok, not all of them kept a journal, I know that for a fact), namely

AM4039, Astra1547, BhbnEr2Him, Brainwhispers, BrandiLynnEliz, CacklinRosie101,
CANDLEJMR, Debbiewebb4465, Edwardssoapy, Fisherkristina, Frankandmary, GaBoatMan, GeminiWilder, HelmsWonderMom, INAFRNZ247, Kimbellina1956, LANursePRN, Leardex, LINDACHAPMANUK, Lindapaterson177, Lsfp1960, Luddie343, Lurkynat, ManiacEyelid, MansNott, Maxsox5, Memes121, Motoxmom72, MzGoochi, NJ LITTLE BEAR, OneCrabN3LilFish, Onestrangecat, Pharmolo, QueenieMart, Ralutja, Rap4143, RYanagi, Stellarghirl, Trishaham and VivianSulliNwank

I have left AOL altogether now. Mzgoochi passed away in November 2007; Stellarghirl was a contact from the AOL News Debate Chatroom, which was my first encounter with Internet chats. And raw it was an' all. Blast from the past? No kiddin'!