Tuesday 30 August

An overcast day, but no rain or high winds. Summer is slowly drawing to a close here. I got myself more stamps for the Postcrossing project today, and 6 cards are winging their way to various parts of the globe.

I also visited the library to revisit the Stornoway Gazette of 1941. I take pictures of articles that I then transcribe; but the resulting pics are not always in focus. Some of the articles are quite interesting, although always very sad - bearing in mind it is tributes to the dead of the Second World War that I am interested in. One man died when his tugboat was blown up by a bomb. That happened a lot, but this occurred in a dock in Glasgow. During the Clydeside blitz of 1941, a bomb had plunged into a dock, but not exploded. It decided to detonate just when a tugboat was over it. This was literally blown out of the water. One man saved himself by shinning up the mast as quickly as the boat went down, and he was saved the moment he reached the top of the mast. Instrumental in the rescue of many crewmen were "coloured seamen" from a nearby merchant ship.

I think that the name Irene will be withdrawn by the WMO (World Meteorological Organisation) from the lists of Atlantic tropical cyclones. Although Irene did not carry extreme winds, she did carry extreme amounts of rain. After being downgraded from hurricane to tropical storm, the water that had powered the cyclone came down to earth with a vengeance. The imagery from New England is breathtaking - in the negative sense of the word.