Good morning, it's Valentine's Day

This morning, our local radio station, Isles FM, had a phone-in asking the following question. "What special day is it today?" Oh for goodness sakes, next thing in the programme they relay Valentine wishes for someone up in Laxdale. Aaargh!



The image above shows the webcam picture from Eoropie, the last village before the Butt of Lewis. At time of writing, it was a brilliantly sunny morning. We have a moderate breeze blowing at 12 to 15 knots - force 4. The forecast is for severe gales overnight, but our never-failing Met Office has not got severe weather warnings out. Of course not. We don't count, do we? Oh well, had this rant before, I'll stop myself.
The satellite image shows a mass of cloud approaching over County Donegal, Ireland, which is more than 300 miles from here. Expect cloud and rain by dusk, around 5.30pm.

I was very sad to learn that New Orleans has been struck by a tornado yesterday, destroying trailers inhabited by survivors of Hurricane Katrina, back in 2005. One person died when her trailer was smashed into her renovated home. More details here.

To close proceedings for this morning, be advised that Microsoft has issued a bunch of 20 security patches for Windows XP and allied programs - none of these were necessary for Windows Vista. If you don't get automatic updates, you're strongly advised to follow the link from the above, linked, BBC page and download it.