The Isle of Bute didn’t avoid the bad weather this time around

I’ve been looking outside for the past few days and counting myself and my neighbours to be lucky, for once.

In the storms and gales that have arrived over the past few years, I’ve seen many walls blown over, bricks and tiles ripped off roofs, and anything light (such as a felt-covered roof) being torn loose and carried away, never to be seen again. Last year saw many trees blown over to, with some landing on nearby houses.

This year, even though I have watched some alarming leaning and bending by some structures, I’ve yet to see the same sort of thing repeated. So far, all I have come across is some hefty branches ripped off tall trees, and they looked weakened by disease or decay. Part of this I put down to the number of repairs and renewals made after the damage of past years, but I still think we’ve been lucky, and the hills around Glasgow have sheltered us – this time.

Less fortunate of areas near me seems to have been the coastal areas of the Firth of Clyde, and after some hearing some descriptions of local damage in the area, got to see the sort of damage that the Isle of Bute suffered. While it has not escaped completely in recent years, it often seems to get off lightly, and when I used to take a jaunt over at Christmas and Hogmanay, was often surprised at just how nice it could be there, even though it was only a few miles away from ‘home,’, where things were not so cosy.

Click on the first picture below, which shows damage to the unfortunate roof of one of Rothesay’s fine ornate tenement buildings on East Princes Street, to see a gallery of the damage done on January 3, 2011.

Damaged tenement roof, January 2011 © Zak

OUCH!

Updated pic by Zak showing the hidden side of the damage caught in the pic above:

Damaged tenement roof, January 2011 © Zak

And finally…

I’m pleased to see that the (presumably) last pic in this series confirmed my location of the unfortunate roof shown above (which was not really difficult):

Damaged tenement, January 2011 © Zak

Update

I noticed another pic that perhaps serves to convey how serious things were, not only on the island itself, but (as I was informed by others) anywhere in this particular corner of Argyll and  Bute served by the same electrical supply.

Heavy winds knocked out the supply from  about 7 am on the 3rd until about 1 am on the 4th!

Below is a pic Zak took of a snack bar ferried over from the mainland to provide hot meals on the 3rd.

Bad as things were, seeing this is actually a good thing as it meant the weather had subsided, and the island was not suffering the additional hard of being cut off from the mainland by the high winds, which can force the ferries to stay in port because of the risks involved with going to sea.

Snack bar ferried from the mainland, January 2011 © Zak