The day started very unfriendly, with lashing rain and strong winds. The gales that we were warned against did not materialise, as we were in the eye of the storm. At midday, the barometer bottomed out at 975 mbar, the rain stopped and the sun came out. As I type this, at 6pm, pressure has risen to 981 mbar as the causative low pressure system moves away east across the North Sea.
Hurricane Katia is moving steadily northwest and will pass between the USA and Bermuda over the next few days. She is not directly threatening land (apart from gales on Bermuda and an inch or two of rain there), but Katia could well threaten the British Isles in a week's time. Having transformed into an "ordinary" low pressure system, it will still be packing winds of up to 60 knots - and hurricane force is only a notch up on that, at 65 knots. I'll monitor the situation over the next few days.
I spent two hours in the library, photographing articles from the Stornoway Gazette containing tributes to servicemen from the Isle of Lewis who were lost during 1942. Towards the end of that year, the rate of the losses decreases noticeably. Although I took 109 images, I reckon it boils down to about 80 or 90 tributes. Once I have completed my current task of researching the witnesses to the Napier Commission from North Uist - 6 down, 7 to go at the moment.
