Monday notes

Yesterday morning, a search was carried out along the shoreline at Arnol, 13 miles north of Stornoway on the West Side of Lewis. A young man in his late teens had fallen from the cliffs near the village. The Coastguard helicopter went out and recovered him from the water. On arrival at hospital in Stornoway, the man was declared dead. Details are not released until his next-of-kin have been notified. This is the third fatality on or near Arnol's coastline within 5 weeks. In the first week of June, a father and son perished whilst on a canoeing trip off the village.

On a more upbeat note, a 14-year old dog was rescued from Dog Falls in Glen Affric, west of Inverness yesterday. The partially deaf and blind animal called Kyle fell in the water, and it took rescuers 3 hours to get him out.

The people in Micronesia, who are having to put up with Tropical Storm Man-Yi are adopting a remarkably relaxed attitude. I quote from the Saipan Blog:

If I was in Florida --- I'd be hunkered down.

Tropical Storm Man-yi is spinning around somewhere above the warm Pacific waters between Guam and Yap right now. In Saipan we're getting a little rain and a lot of wind, but I don't think we're going to sustain any damage.

You know how whenever there is a storm in the Atlantic, every news station from Galveston to Key West to Richmond turns into Tropical Storm Center [insert channel number here]? Well, that doesn't happen in Saipan.

In Saipan you sit on the beach drinking a beer until someone says, "Hey, it sure seems windy today."

Then, depending on the severity of the wind, you either finish your beer and then A. call the Emergency Management Office or B. crack open another beer.

We went with option B last night [...] a BBQ. We all kept commenting on the wind and the fact that it was picking up, but nobody seemed too concerned. In fact, in place of worry, I think the consensus was that it would be pretty nice if every day was this breezy.

NOTE: If you decide to comment in the Saipan Blog, please do NOT refer to this blog, as I have commented linking back to my Tropical Cyclones Blog on Blogger, not Northern Trip.