Day of wind

Well, it's not blowing here, that's for sure. We never had more than 15 mph, that's force 4 on the Beaufort scale. After my lunchtime update, the weather just got quite summerlike for a few hours. By 3pm, I was sorely tempted to go and sit outside in the sunshine, with the mercury at a most creditable 17C. The only thing that spoiled it was the midges. By 4pm, the cloud returned and we had a shower of rain.

I am just hearing that a driver was killed on a road in county Durham, when a tree was blown onto his vehicle. A boy of 11 was injured when he was struck by a roof, blown off a garage in the same area of England. The winds appear to be subsiding on the western side of the British Isles, but may pick up again - but we remain in the eye of the causative depression.

Monday 12 September

It is 1.20pm as I type this entry, and it is brightly sunny with a mild breeze. Not what you might have expected from me, after all the dire warnings I have been pumping out all through last week. An indication of Katia's presence is the low barometric reading (974 mbar) and winds of 50 to 75 mph over Northern Ireland, southwestern Scotland as well as west Wales. The depression is directly overhead - we're in the eye of the storm. I'll update later if conditions change markedly.