It's been a rough couple of days on the island as we, like large swathes of the country, have been battered by Storm Ellen. 60mph winds coincided with spring tides of 7.5m+ meaning the swell at the top of the tide was amplified. These sort of storms are common place in autumn and winter so to get one of this magnitude in August was unusual.
Over the years I have grown used to seeing scenes like those in the video below but as someone pointed out to me, it's a rare sight for most people. Let's face it if our days visitors ever witnessed this then something has gone seriously wrong in our daily reading of the forecasts!
Autumn storms are not good news for our grey seal pups. The only saving grace this time being that Ellen occurred early in the season so numbers were still low. We had around 10 pups on the beaches as of the middle of last week, how many of those made it through remains to be seen. As you might have seen from the last post, our attention turns to the impact of storms on our Manx shearwaters at this time of year - again timing was on our side in this respect as very few birds have started fledging yet.
The video below shows the harbour at the height of the storm yesterday morning - it was still rough down there this morning but the wind had dropped to a mere gale. Things are set to ease further tomorrow and Monday before another deep low hits us on Tuesday. It's not an easy time for the wildlife on Ramsey at the moment.....