More Storms – Franklin and Gladys

After taking quite a bettering from Storm Eunice, Franklin followed hot on her heels and was actually more ferocious. Wind speed topped out at over 59 knots during Franklin and they were sustained too with 10 minute average wind speeds of 58.6 knots. All recorded on the Borth and Ynyslas Weather station.

Talking of the weather station, it was good to get a few more people sign up to it during the storms. I charge a small fee (£20 a year) for access to the data simply to help cover some of the costs of running it and maintaining it. It was originally set up for windsurfers and kite-surfers travelling to Ynyslas but as I thought it would be of interest to locals I opened it up to everyone in the hope that I’d get more subscribers. I never did get additional subscriber though so numbers are still very low but the recent storms did see a couple of locals sign up. All good news for me as I like running the weather station and having access to the live and historical data from it, so any contributions to keeping it up and running are always appreciated.

Damage

The storms did of course see some damage locally here in Ynyslas.

• The wooden sea wall along the top of the pebbles by the car park at Ynyslas took yet more damage. It’s going to be quite a big repair job now. let’s hope they actually do repair it and that they do so fairly quickly.
• The shed that the golf course use for storage has seen some significant damage too.
• Balcony’s have been blown off houses,
• Power cables have been wrenched from their fixings
• Cars have been damaged.
• Panels have been blown off the roof at the Visitor Centre

We got away fairly lightly. We’d put all the bins and other unsecured items into the house or shed prior to the storms. We’d moved pots and other things from the garden too and secured the outside storage boxes.

Despite this, our pergola was blown over as we didn;t think about securing that! It looks as though it is intact and shouldn’t be too difficult to put back up.

Beehives

We also tied all of the beehives down and piled extra bricks on top of them

However, one of our beehives also blew over. Typically it was the one with the strongest, healthiest colony in it. I did get to it quite quickly though and with the help of Morgan managed to put it back upright. The fact that it was tied together with webbing straps meant that the bees hadn’t been too exposed to the cold and wind so they might make it. We fed them while we were at it and also had a quick look into the other hives. The colony that was in the hive that was blown over earlier in the winter had succumbed to the ordeal. All the bees were dead so I cleaned the hive out and disposed of the corpses. The other colony was very small but was at least still alive. Fingers crossed that the larger colony at least makes it through to Spring.

More Damage

We also took a bit of damage to our log store. I think we’ll have to buy a new one. It was already quite old and was held together with off-cuts of wood here and there. The roof had caved in years ago and I’d put the doors of the shed onto the roof to replace it. So, it’s not a huge loss.

The house we use for Harriet, one of our robot lawn mowers, was also damaged. Again, that’s not a huge surprise as it was cobbled together from off-cuts of second hand wood in the first place. I’ve already repaired and reinforced it, so if it lasts Harriet another year it will have easily have paid its way.

Everything (inside and out) was obviously caked in salt and sand!

Storm Galdys

We’re now in the midst of the third named storm in a week, This time it’s Gladys. She seems a little more hospitable so far. It’s windy out there (topping out at around 41 knots at the moment), but it’s also fairly sunny. It doesn’t seem to be much more than a normal windy day at the beach really. Gladys is due to peak later this afternoon though so I guess that could change. It’s definitely too early to start relaxing and there seems little point in putting the pergola back up until these storms have passed.

If they’ve blown through by Sunday then it might be time to start some work in the garden and get the robots back into action.

Tags: WeatherWeather Station