They said it would be windy and it was. Technically speaking the storm that hit us on 8th December wasn’t a hurricane – that name only applies to the mega-depressions that blossom in the mid-Atlantic – but the winds were hurricane force. Here are some exciting stats for you: highest recorded windspeed was 165mph on Cairngorm summit. At lower levels the strongest gust was 105mph at Tulloch Bridge and in my garden my anemometer peaked at 73mph. This might sound a paltry figure compared to the other two but bear in mind my garden is on a sheltered bay in Loch Nevis and 73mph is still hurricane force (just).
Thanks to the power of social networking sites the storm soon became known as “Hurricane Bawbag”, crude Scottish slang for part of the male anatomy. If you want a more specific definition, google it. Why it was given this name is a mystery to me. (As a Sassunach who has lived in Scotland for the best part of 15 years you’d think I would get Scottish humour by now.) The prudish among you may prefer the official name of this Atlantic depression: “Friedhelm” (according to Wikipedia). But my favourite term is that used by meteorologists who – for a bunch of level-headed scientists – came up with an unexpectedly sensationalist phrase : ”weather bomb”.
The storm peaked around mid-afternoon so I sensibly put my wellies and jacket on and headed down to the beach to film the weather bombing. I gave up using a tripod: it was impossible to keep the camera still so I just lay on the pebbles and held it as steady as I could. I’ve never seen our sheltered loch look so menacing. The wind sounded like the screams of a banshee and the squalls tore the water from the surface. The open sea to the west of us must have been heaving.
I’d have liked to have filmed a bit more but a combination of factors: salt spray hitting the camera, feet losing contact with the ground and trees being blown over, persuaded me to indulge in the comfort of a hot cup of tea and a Tunnocks teacake in my living room. As darkness fell, the slates blew off the roof and the hen house began to rock from its foundations. It was going to be a tough night for our chicken. Next day I headed out to help with the clean up in the village. Electricity and phones were off (phones are still off as I write this five days later) and the school was closed. In the pub that evening an argument raged about which storm was worse: this one or the one in 2005.
So, here’s the geeky bit where I compare the two storms. The tide was much higher in ’05 and the storm surge washed parts of our road away but this recent storm felled more trees. As for wind speeds, the strongest gust on the summit of Cairngorm in 2011 (165mph) beats that of 2005 (139mph) but at low levels the competition is closer. In ’05 a wind speed of 134mph was recorded on the island of North Rona compared with 105mph at Tulloch Bridge in 2011. But the Isle of Rona is a tiny exposed island on the edge of the Atlantic so you’d expect the wind to be stronger there. Tulloch Bridge is some way inland so a more favourable comparison would use the strongest inland gust and that was 96mph in 2005 at Loch Glascarnoch. The argument as to which storm was worse rages on, as does the wind…it’s blowing a gale out there again as I write.
