Many thanks to Out&About for this picture of the electricity wire burning yesterday morning after the lightning strike in Kilchoan. It wasn't the only strike on the peninsula. Another, out at the lighthouse, damaged the lighthouse itself, with the result that it stopped working, and blew phones, routers, and various other pieces of electrical equipment out there and at Sanna. The biggest worry when this happens is that the older members of the community who have all-electric heating are watched out for.
We'd hardly recovered from yesterday's outage when lightning again struck at 6.30 this morning - we saw a tremendous flash over Ben Hiant and the power went off. This time the damage was back down the line, with 500 households affected all along the peninsula. The engineers from Scottish Hydro Electric had a devil of a task finding the fault, but managed to get a generator down to Caim, where they have a pole specially prepared that they can hook into, so the power was back on by the end of the morning. It's due to be off again this afternoon when they reconnect to the mains.
The lightning has come with a series of electrical storms which have also brought heavy hail, making for miserable conditions for the animals and birds as well as for the humans.
By early this afternoon the wind had swung into the north and the temperature began to drop, but at least the storm clouds cleared. We were left with a low sun shining through the bottom of the clouds, silhouetting Glengorm Castle on the other side of the Sound.
There's snow on all the hills around us, along with a little more on Ben Hiant. This picture comes from Kilchoan Early Bird, for which many thanks, and shows the view looking across to Muck, with the hills of Rum rising behind.
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