Windy day pictures

Just to clarify: I took all the pictures, related to the "Windy Day" theme outside, and in the full force of the hurricane. Windspeeds that day topped 65 mph at the time I was taking the pictures; out in the open sea, the wind went in excess of 90 mph - sustained speeds.

A hurricane in Scotland refers to the windspeed. The designation bears no relation to tropical hurricanes, to which I frequently refer in this blog. Just like the nor'easter that battered the eastern US in recent days, we get intense low pressure systems. Although the recent storm system in the US had a central pressure of 975 mbar, I have a lowest reading of 959 mbar on record. A depression with a central reading of 916 mbar occurred near Iceland some years ago. The difference with a tropical system is their size. A hurricane only measures a few hundred miles across. North Atlantic weathersystems extend for thousands of miles. The very deep depressions that give us high winds may influence the weather as far away as the Azores, which lie east of Portugal, at latitude 40 North. We are at 58 North. Sometimes, we get swipes from low pressure systems that are centered near Svalbard, at latitude 80 North.