Raging Sea

Hard to imagine this is where I normally take blips of the sun rising over the south of Arran! It's blown a gale for the last 24 hours with a lot of rain falling from the leaden sky.

As I lay in bed last night with the rain and wind battering off the roof window, I suddenly remembered there was a high tide due about three in the morning. Now the combination of a a 3.2 metre tide, gale force south easterly winds (on shore and into the front of our house) and heavy rain is the perfect recipe for flooding. It means all the extra water in the river cannot escape into the sea and ends up flooding the land. I was in two minds whether to get up and move the 2 cars to the higher ground at the back of the house. However, flood water has only ever once reached the spot where they were parked and I decided to go to sleep.

It was with some trepidation that I looked out of the window at first light. Fortunately, there were only some smaller patches of flooding from the heavy rain with the tide having stopped about 10 foot from the garden.

While we were lucky the local Heritage Centre, which I help look after, was not. Drains and gutters had got blocked with leaves allowing water levels to build up and enter the building at several points. It was a case of getting the draining rods out and, with the help of Mrs B, clearing up all the leaves that still threatened the drains. Fortunately, we have just bought a couple of dehumidifiers, which were put in the worst affected area and turned up full.

As the afternoon high tide approached I took a walk out to the Bay to watch the waves crashing on the shore. The light was very poor and I only took a few shots. Quite liked this panorama as it gets lots of raging sea into a single blip!