Storm Dennis, Dennis Storm or maybe Elvis?
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BEING in the right place at the right time and shooting hundreds of photographs can pay dividends if you're looking for something out of the ordinary.
This reporter did just that through the weekend as Storm Dennis hit Caithness – and, though its effect was very much muted compared with the rest of the country, it seemed that one particular image was noteworthy.
As a large swell hit the north pier of Wick harbour, a quick snap of the crashing wave seems to show a spectral figure highlighted by water droplets – Storm Dennis, or Dennis Storm, perhaps?
The above image attracted over 30 comments and 60 "likes" within an hour on the Facebook page Caithness Crack.
Elspeth Durrand saw a "cyberman" while Dennis More said "it looks like Elvis with his guitar".
The eye of the storm is in the eye of the beholder, no doubt, but joking aside the "weather bomb" was notable as one of the most powerful storms recorded in the North Atlantic, according to Wick weather watcher Keith Banks.
"Storm Dennis had a greater impact on Caithness than did storm Ciara a week earlier," said Keith, who contributes a monthly Weather Watch column to the John O'Groat Journal.
"On Sunday afternoon a gale force eight south-south-westerly wind pummelled Wick. There were gusts in the storm of force 10 category on the Beaufort scale."
Keith said the strongest wind of 62.2 mph was recorded locally at 4pm on Sunday.
"The winds eased during the evening but veered to south-westerly and increased again to gale force eight during the early hours of Monday morning as storm Dennis swept eastwards to the north of Scotland towards Norway."
He said that damaging gusts of up to 60 mph, storm force 10, had been observed in Wick before daybreak today (Monday).
"Storm Dennis was a 'super weather bomb'. A so-called weather bomb is a cyclone that experiences a pressure fall of at least 24mb in 24 hours.
"In the case of Storm Dennis the pressure dropped by 46mb in 24 hours. Meteorologists call this rapid intensification of a depression 'explosive cyclogenesis'."
No major disruption was recorded in Caithness, unlike other parts of the UK where amber warnings were issued by the Met Office and flooding, power outages and fallen trees affected many.
Keith thinks the recent storms are a "portent of things to come" and are the products of global warming.
"We're living in dangerous times with global warming denialists ignoring the facts at humanity's peril," he said.
"We're getting these storms because the ice caps are melting and there's more water released in the atmosphere – which means there is more energy for storms."
Perhaps the spectral figure at Wick is sending a wake-up call to us all?
