Storm!

 It's not often that one sees such unanimity amongst the forecasters.  Tomorrow, according to Yr.No (above), we face the prospect of a full storm in the period between 1800 and midnight, while....

....XCWeather predicts force 10 after 1800 gusting to force 12, with gusts of 81mph.  We've seen forecasts as bad before during this winter, but not this close to the event.

The culprit is the swirl of winds at the centre of this clip from Cameron Beccario's superb rendition of Earth's surface wind speeds, a nasty little depression which is heading straight for us.

The Met Office has a yellow warning out, with the words, "The public should be aware of the potential for disruption, particularly to transport and power supplies.The public should be aware of the potential for disruption from these strong winds."  One wonders what they would be saying if this lot was heading for central London.

Taste of Spring Again

If this early sign of spring looks a bit bedraggled, it isn't surprising.  In the last two days we've been inundated with 61mm of rain brought in by winds that have gusted to gale force.

The hoards of chaffinches at our feeders have been joined by hoards of yellowhammers, possibly because our neighbour, Trevor Potts at the Ardnamurchan Campsite, who reported fourteen at his feeders earlier in the winter, has been away.  Like many of the small birds, they're already in their breeding plumage, and the males are a stunning sight.

The weather showed some promise of clearing this morning so we took a walk along the shoreline to the west of us in warm sunshine and a light northwesterly breeze, but....

....as we returned along the road, congratulating ourselves on not getting wet, a dark cloud swept over the ridge at the back of Ormsaigbeg and dumped a heavy shower of 'snail', a mixture of snow and hail, before clearing as quickly.

In the bright sunshine that followed, this small helicopter buzzed along in front of the house, and went on over Kilchoan Bay in the direction of Maclean's Nose.  It was a very neat little machine but looked as if it couldn't carry more than one person.  As helicopters shrink in size, they'll merge into the increasingly large pilotless drones.

Working Boats

The Panamanian-registered tug Luca came up the Sound this morning, on her way north after towing the Lysblink Seaways to the Clyde.  She's one of several oceangoing tugs owned by the Gesmar Group, which specialises in towage.  The Group is based at Ravenna, in Italy.

Two working boats which I don't know have passed along the Ormsaigbeg shore in the last few days.  This one may have been working on laying the anchors at the new Marine Harvest fish farm at Maclean's Nose.  She passed us in a near gale, the conditions so bad that I couldn't read her name - does anyone know her?

This one came past this morning and should have been easily identifiable - except that the paint on her name is well camouflaged against her blue hull.  Again, does anyone know her name?

'Fri Sea' Ashore

The Fri Sea, which is seen in this picture passing Kilchoan last Tuesday, is reported to have been blown ashore at Corpach, near Fort William, in today's high winds.  See story here.

Many thanks to Out&About for drawing my attention to the story.

Archaeology of St Comghan's Churchyard

We've had some 40mm of rain in the last 24 hours, brought in on a strong westerly wind, so today wasn't a great day for the course on graveyard archaeology, run by our friends Cara Jones and Phil Richardson at the 'Adopt a Monument' section of Archaeology Scotland.  Fortunately, most of the learning was done at the Kilchoan Learning Centre before we set off for St Comghan's.

St Comghan's dates back to at least the 13th century, and there was probably a church on the site well before that.  The area is now a scheduled historic monument, the last burials here being about twenty years ago.  Highland Council cuts the grass, but Historic Scotland is responsible for repairs - and the first thing the group noticed was that a wall of what we take to be a small family mausoleum has fallen down.  This will be reported to Historic Scotland and, hopefully, a repair will be effected, but it serves to illustrate the danger of rapid deterioration of many of the graves.

The project which is planned by Ardnamurchan Community Archaeology will be to map the graveyard, record the location of each grave, and add as much information as possible about the person interred there.  It's hoped to put this on-line so it's accessible to people who cannot visit the church.

In places in the churchyard there are these metal markers, which suggest that, at one time, a record of burials was maintained, but we don't know where that record is held - if it still exists.  If anyone has any suggestions, we'd be grateful.

The churchyard has some nationally important monuments in it, including two grave slabs of the Iona school of carving, dating back to the 14th or 15th centuries - see the MacIain website here.  However there are several other slabs of stone which might be overturned grave slabs.  Because the whole site is an historic monument, we cannot move them, but the carvings on some of them might be accessible with a bit of ingenuity.