Picture post - 9 October

The Oldest Swinger in town, Carishader



Lewis Chessman, Ardroil

Uig Sands, Ardroil

Island in mourning

The Isle of Lewis, and in particular the tiny community of Mangersta in the district of Uig, is mourning the death of local resident Linda Norgrove, who was killed in Afghanistan today. I did not learn of this loss until I called into the Uig shop at Timsgarry this afternoon, which explained the presence of the news media in the district. Mangersta, population now 28, is perched on the edge of the west of Lewis, and can ill afford the loss of one its number, particular at such a young age. I am sure the readers of Atlantic Lines will join me in extending their heartfelt sympathies to Linda's family and friends, in Uig, Lewis and further afield.

Saturday 9 October

A stunningly beautiful autumn morning, with blue skies, hardly a cloud to be seen and only a gentle breeze. The birds were out early, looking for worms and other foodstuffs. We're promised a daytime maximum temperature of about 16C / 60F, which is quite decent for this time of year. Tomorrow should see more of the same.

I've been working with the emailed updates from a selected number of blogs, and it's working very well. I've got hundreds of feeds and blogs on Google Reader, and it was getting impossible to keep up. Now, about a dozen updates each morning is quite easy to go through.

I'll have another post later today - I may go out and about this afternoon, which usually results in dozens of pictures.

Friday 8 October

A brilliantly sunny and warm day, with the mercury at the dizzying heights of 18C / 64F at 4pm. Some high-level cloud is drifting over, but otherwise it was warm enough to sit outside for lunch. I had already put the garden chairs away, but I was more than happy to put them back again. 

Spent the afternoon transcribing more evidence from the Napier Commission in Orkney, and it contains some pretty harrowing stuff - unexpected perhaps. The island of Rousay, northwest of the archipelago's capital Kirkwall, was owned by a General Burroughs. He exercised his law-enshrined powers as landowners to such an extent that his tenants referred to his conduct as "wanton and inconsiderate inhumanity", only marginally diluted to "[being treated in an] utterly inconsiderate and unrighteous manner". The island's minister, Archibald Maccallum, spoke on behalf of most of the island's crofters, followed by an interrogation of others. James Leonard requested an assurance from the landowner that none of the evidence given by him or others would lead to 'consequences' - an assurance that General Burroughs refused to give point blank. In fact, he rebutted the request by saying that if anyone was not happy, they should just go away. The case, presented by Georgina Inkster, was a good demonstration of the general's high-handed attitude. Another exampled was quoted by James Leonard:

A woman [lived] in our island whom the proprietor visited, when she was on her death-bed. She had a small croft, and he would have to leave it, because he was going to give it to another person—a stranger. She said she would never leave it until she was put to a house from which no man could remove her. He said—What house is that?—and she said—' Where I will be buried;' and he struck his stick on the ground and said, ' Would you like to be buried here on this floor?'

Thursday 7 October

Today, I was pleased to meet with a well-known writer from the West Highlands, Roger Hutchinson, whose books include Calum's Road. This tells the tale of a man from Raasay, Calum Macleod, who single-handedly built a road to his village when Inverness-shire county council declined to do so. By the time the road was made, only Calum himself was left at Arnish, Raasay. Roger is attending a conference in Stornoway about the way forward to develop the economy of the Western Isles, which uses the model of the co-operative. Spent a couple of hours in Roger's company, alongside with a mainland-based facilitator, which made for a most enjoyable afternoon and evening.


Picture courtesy Flickr-user Raasayweb, who have released the image under a Creative Commons License.

Feedblitz

Feedblitz is a service that allows you to send out your own blogposts to those who have subscribed to that service; and allows you to be notified when any of the bloggers you want to keep track of makes a new post. As far as I understand it, if you are a new user you may be required to pay after 30 days. If you have been using it since about 2007 or '08, you can continue to use it for free.

If you Google for "RSS to email", you will be presented with a list of similar service providers. If you are familiar with Google Reader (or similar feed-aggregator), this should not present you with much difficulty. Basically, you need the URL of the blogs you want to be notified about and an email address to have the updates sent to. Read the FAQ's to see if you will be charged at some point.

Wednesday 6 October

The gale did not die down until the sun rose at 7.30 this morning. Heavy showers continued intermittently through the day, although it is not really cold outside. Spent an hour in the library transcribing tributes from the Stornoway Gazette from May and June 1917. The losses continue to mount up during those months - I found nearly twenty tributes over 5 weeks.

After the Deep Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, Europe has its own pollution catastrophe. A massive spill of red toxic sludge is moving downstream along the River Danube in Hungary - it has caused sludge floods of 6 to 7 feet deep near the site where the reservoir of sludge was breached earlier this week.

Blog reading

An attempt to resume a blog reading habit that has fallen by the wayside: I am manually transferring my entries on Google Reader to Feedblitz, which generates a daily digest of everybody's blog entries every night - much like the much maligned (and missed) AOL Alerts. I have just done the blogs A to D, and hope to complete E to Z tomorrow.

Tuesday 5 October

Quite a wild day, with a steady force 7 blowing from the south, gusting to 70 mph at the Butt of Lewis. The ferry is sailing (barely), with extensive disruption elsewhere in the west and north of Scotland. The sun is out, in between some beefy downpours, with the mercury at a creditable 14C / 57F. I have resumed transcriptions of the Napier Report, currently going through the evidence gathered at Sanday, Orkney.


Sanday, courtesy Flickr-user phedre934

Monday 4 October

World Animal Day today. It is not a terribly nice day, with strong winds. Although it is sunny in the morning and the early afternoon, rain comes down in buckets later on. The start of it caught me out as I ventured forth to the shop, a couple of hundred yards away. There is extensive disruption on the ferries, and our freight ferry, the Muirneag, is off. Expecting empty shelves in the shop tomorrow.

The Callanish Stones have had a third more visitors this year than the year before, meaning that the visitor centre there has struggled to cope. It was upgraded in March, but another upgrade seems likely if island's prime tourist site continues to pull in the crowds. Callanish is a 5,000 year old site, where several dozen stones, some up to 15 feet in height, have been arranged in a circle and outward in the shape of a cross. Its purpose is shrouded in mystery, but the leading theory is of a lunar calendar. From the site, the Lunar Standstill can be observed - this sees the moon rising low behind the Lochs hills (15 miles away to the east), disappearing behind Roineabhal, then reappearing to set behind the Clisham. Three years ago, I was at Callanish to observe the phenomenon: I close the post with some of those pics.

Sunday 3 October

Fairly bright this morning, but with some showers and wind about. Not warm at all, the northeasterly making the 12C feel decidedly cool.

Today is the 20th anniversary of the reunification of Germany, which brought to a close more than seventy years of upheaval in the country. After the end of the First World War, Germany was pointed out as the sole culprit for the bloody conflagration, which was not a fair assertion. WW1 was a powderkeg, carefully assembled by the combatants United Kingdom, France, Austra-Hungary, Russia, Germany and their allies over the years between 1905 and 1914.

In the Treaty of Versailles, signed in June 1919, Germany had crippling reparations imposed upon it, which were whittled down considerably over the years. They served to wreck the German economy, and coupled with the economic depression of the 1930s, allowed Adolf Hitler to rise to the fore with a promise to make Germany great again. World War II is held by many to be a direct consequence of the Treaty of Versailles, and by implication the result of the vindictiveness of the victorious Allies.

That error was fortunately not repeated at the end of WW2. However, the division of Europe came in the wake of the Second World War, with the Berlin Wall (erected in 1961) being the most visible manifestation of that. The Wall did not just part Berlin, it also ran along the border between East and West Germany. Anyone trying to cross the boundary line without authorisation was liable to be shot dead on sight - a fate that befell several hundred people.

Communism imploded in Europe in the late 1980s, with the advent of Michail Gorbachev in the USSR and Karol Wojtyla as Pope John Paul II. On November 9th, 1989, the people of East Germany tore down the Berlin Wall and crossed into West Germany without proper authority. The armed forces stood by and did not interfere. Germany was reunified within a year, on 3rd October 1990, bringing not just liberty to its eastern Länder, but also a large economic burden to the western part of the country.

Although the Fall of the Wall took place on November 9th, this date was not adopted as the date of commemoration. On 9 November 1938, nationwide pogroms (or anti-Jewish raids) were held across Germany, which came to be known as the Night of Broken Glass, or Kristallnacht. I shall remember that night of infamy on 9 November this year (as I always do), and be thankful that much has changed in the 72 years since.

Blogoversary

As I hinted a few days ago, yesterday was the second anniversary of this blog, Atlantic Lines. It was a complete change from its predecessor Northern Trip, which remains on-line as an archive of four years of blogging. AOL no longer features in amongst my on-line service providers, its functionality having been usurped by Google, Facebook and Twitter. I am contemplating a revamp of my sidebar, which has remained broadly unchanged for the past two years. Keep checking back (said he, who hardly ever reads someone else's blog these days).

Royal National Mod

It's October, and in about two weeks' time, the Royal National Mod will be upon Gaelic Scotland again. The Mod is a showcase of Gaelic culture, not just about music incidentally. It is also about dance, drama and sport. This year, the event will take place in Caithness, the far northeast of Scotland, centred on the towns of Thurso and Wick. Caithness is not in the Gaelic heartland; it has more of a Norse background to its culture. The name Caithness runs as Cataibh in Gaelic, the Land of the Cats. The neighbouring county of Sutherland has a stronger Gaelic connection - Sutherland means Southland in Norse.

In 2005, I recorded some items from the Mod in Stornoway, which you can listen to from my Mod webpage, to give you an idea.

Saturday 2 October

Quite a nice day, with warm sunshine (behind glass) and varying cloudscapes. I have caught up with the tributes from the local paper for men who were killed in the First World War. I have relocated the links to a "page" page on Blogger, the link for which appears on my Faces from the Lewis War Memorial site. I'll have to go back to the library to find more tributes from the Gazette. This paper was published from 1917 onwards, but for the first four months, I have already dug up more than 30 tributes. One of them has me in touch with the Gaelic Society of London, as it refers to the son of one of its former presidents who was killed in action. Am awaiting snailmail, as the current Chief is not on email.

As I glanced out of the window at 6.30pm, the sun is headed for the horizon, leaving me with another glorious sunset. This was the image yesterday.


And tonight is about as impressive

Friday 1 October

Not a very pleasant start to October, with wind and rain for the morning. As I type this, with the clock nearing 3.30pm, there is some brightness moving up from the southwest, but it remains windy. Next Friday will see my 6th anniversary as a blogger, which commenced in the village of Kyleakin in the Isle of Skye, some 80 miles south of Stornoway.


Fifty miles to the north, a cave on the island of Rona will see a marriage for the first time. Rona (not to be confused with North Rona, which lies 45 miles northeast of Lewis) had a population of 240 in the 1880s, but nowadays only has 2 permanent inhabitants. The happy couple, from Bolton in Lancashire, first met in the cave, shown below.

Image courtesy Panoramio.com, copyright Andrew Russon. 

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