Repaired

Earlier in the winter we have a bit of a storm that  did some damage 

The weather hasn't been too bad  so bit of pottering around at weekends  ( its only now light enough to do stuff in the early evening ) Ive managed to repair it

And ive taken the opportunity to create a shortcut - a gap in the wall that we can step through.

The only problem is the mud on the slope -  it will get easier when it all dries out a bit but at the moment its too muddy and slippery to use.

So id better have think about putting some steps in .

now you see it , now you dont, now you do.

Storm Henry  brought a tree down.

and the next Easterly storm blew it back up

and then the next one has blown it down again . The roots are more exposed this time. A copl dmore storms and it will come out all by itself !

Horizontal hail

there was a bit of a fuss about the 'Weather bomb' that hit the UK last week. It affected mainly the Western Isles , but we got a bit of bad weather. The Radio Orkney facebook  page collected some  weather pictures . The most dramatic one is probably this

 I suspect  it was at Yesnaby, the west-facing cliffs of mainland Orkney.
So the weather bomb was been and gone and we are back to the usual winter storms in Orkney.  At the start of the week we had some wind and snow and ice and the ferries were off . That too has gone by and its back to normal.

So its a bit windy today

60-70 mph gusts

 Gusts of 60-70 mph.if yo click on the image it will enlarge.  But 60-70 mph winds here don't get a mention in the paper or the news.
When its like  this with an electrical storm on top we do tend to lose the electricity supply. Usually just for a few minutes at a time but occasionally longer, particularly overnight.  And this plays havoc with thing with timers in that havent got  backup batteries- alarm clocks, ovens, VCRs and desktop computers etc. So you just leave it until the storm has gone by.

We dont really get snow - its hail that settles. We've tried to get pictures of sheets of hail falling horizontally but haven't found a way . this is about the best we can manage. The hazy bits  is the hail  getting blown across from right to left.

the sheep have got the idea though - we put up some windbreaks on the fields and the make use of them by getting out of the hail