Last night at around 9pm, the weather started to deteriorate markedly. Dark showerclouds moved up from the west, the wind (which had already been at force 5 all day) picked up further. The Eoropie private weather station recorded gusts of wind of 57 mph at one point. And just after 10pm, a tornado dropped in for a passing visit. It came ashore near the ferry terminal, overturned a car outside the Sea Angling Club, jumped to James Street to rip gates off a private driveway, then on to Garden Road where the lead flashings came loose on a house - presumably because the rooftiles were being lifted off. Trees had limbs taken off and shredded. Next on to Matheson Road, where two small trees were downed just off Smith Avenue. And Jamieson Drive, a little way further on, also incurred some damage. The twister disappeared in the darkness off Sand Street, 2 miles north of the original point of landfall.
On the
Fujita scale, which measures the strength of a tornado, judging by the damage it leaves behind, this one was an F1 tornado. Overturning a car puts it at F1, as does roof damage. The Coastguard reported a sudden increase and decrease of windspeed as the phenomenon passed. The Met Office rainfall radar last night showed a small burst of intense rainfall, moving at high speed from the west coast of Uig to Stornoway between 9pm and 9.30pm.
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="450" caption="Path of tornado across Stornoway"]
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Eeeek! I've just been reading about this on the BBC website. This is surely very unusual in the summer? Hope the lighthouse hasn't lost its roof :-)
ReplyDeletethis could have been a lot worse if it had the oil depot.
ReplyDeletevery close call, did you mange to get any more images mate?
did you hide under the bed Arnish??
ReplyDeleteI would have liked to have taken pics, but there is not much point in photographing something that is no longer there (blown away fences and gates). Also, the tornado passed several hundred yards from my position. The only thing indicating something was amiss were three severe power dips, and very high windspeeds up at Eoropie. Isles FM were the first to alert me to the dire events of last night first thing this morning.
ReplyDeleteI like the idea of a Fajita Scale:grin:
ReplyDeleteTornados are scary things. I live in Oklahoma, in what is known as Tornado alley. We all live by the philosophy… if no one gets hurt, everything else is minor damage. Not that it’s not a total pain to clean up and expensive to boot. Hopefully no one was hurt in your area.
ReplyDeleteThanks Arnish, thought Id ask anyway.
ReplyDeleteHere in Swithiod a tornado visited the town of halmstad (West Coast, S. of gothenburg). There was a kiteboarding competition going on. A couple of kiters were lifted from the water, blown in over land and dropped on said land from a height of several meters. One died ofhis injuries and the other eventually recovered from multiple fractures including his pelvis. It seems pretty certain that the frequency of tornadoes in European waters is on the increase, which is bad news for all and sundry.
ReplyDelete