Thursday, November 08, 2007

Slightly windy

A lot of talking about the weather on the show today...you can hear it in its two-hour entirety using the BBC's Listen Again service...or just bits of it.
Many, many texts and emails...why was Troon 'like Boston'? Was there really a five metre swell on the Pentland Firth? (It's five to seven metres in the open sea, they say...all ferries to and from Shetland, and all planes, are currently off.)
Loved this poem, which came in anonymously:

A N.wind fairly fankles quines'tresses,
Causin'mony emotional stresses.
But fit sair gars'em greet-'S horizontal caul'sleet.
Scotia's wither jist isna for Jessies!


Not sure if 'Jessie' is politically correct, but when it comes to the weather...

Meanwhile, as I write this, there's a weird suction effect within the house which means all the water in both toilets has been sucked out, and the cat flap is perpetually open as if there were wind blowing from the inside of the house out...I believe the wind creates a vacuum, which is why, in tornadoes, houses can implode.

Despite the forecasts, conditions have worsened as the night has gone on. It's about as bad as I can remember it, with that weird low vibration you get during big gusts (anything up to 100 mph) when the house seems to thrum and hum, you can feel strange eddies in the room, and you sense the change of pressure deep in your chest. It reminds of the night the wind scoured (most of ) Shetland clean of the oil spilt by the tanker Braer, as I sat drinking and yarning in a cottage in Skeld...

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