With sympathy for Cumbrian members.....

No doubt all our UK members have seen the recent weather news (and have possibly experienced the storm so far). You'll have seen that Cumbria was particularly badly-hit.

We island-dwellers in Orkney had a fairly rough time of it this last couple of days, as well. Estimates of the local wind speeds vary between 115 and 135 mph - we can't be sure, because the Met station anemometer got smashed. This is a picture of one of my local pubs, taken yesterday and printed in our local paper:



Here in Snorri Mansions, we got off a lot more lightly, but we did get rainwater seeping in through the skylight windows and through the ceiling. Saucepans, pots and dog bowls had to be deployed at 4.30 a.m., to catch the incoming water. The dogs experienced a bit of trouble when they had to go out for "business" - squatting in 100 mph + can't be all that easy.

BBC News showed a little film clip of boats floating along the road at the village of St Mary's (a.k.a. "Holm") which is right on our only route to town. The Churchill Barriers were closed by the police, and one of our village shops got trashed. At least nobody was killed (unlike on the Hebridean island of Benbecula), but there has been serious damage in other parts of the county.

So, Cumbrians, someone else DOES know what it was like!

Snorri

OMG poor people and we moan cos of a bit of wind but we had no floods

Terrible, seen it on the news must be devistating for those in the thick of it.

What is going on with the weather? Lately thats all it is on the news. All over the worls some freak weather conditions are going on.

OMG

And I was complaining about the small damages I had here? ops: ops:
I´m sorry.

OMG saw it on the news. Did any1 die?

Poor Snorrie and Amanda (C.Lass) I was thinking of you all in the bad weather, needless to say you did not get the same coverage in the media as you would have done further south hope you are all ok

hope everyone is ok

That's terrible

I thought of you last weekend Snorri - we had heavy winds but about 40mph less than in the islands!

My MIL is in Edinburgh, about 3 stone wringing wet and the wind just took her and blew her into the road. Luckily no cars going by at that moment but it took 3 strong schoolboys to rescue her and set her straight on the pavement and walk her home

Hope it's not too long before everyone affected is on the road to normality.

I was thinking about you on Tuesday/Wednesday I have family in the north of Scotland, although not as far up as you.

We, in Glasgow seemed to miss the worst of it.