A damp night

We woke up to a wet day – it probably hadn’t stopped raining all night. Facebook was full of pictures of flooding in Oban so I donned full waterproofs and set off with the camera.

The usual flooding here is in the car park opposite Tesco. I believe there is supposed to be an automatic pumping set-up, but if so, it’s not very reliable! Flooding here is very frequent – it’s quite normal after heavy rain to see water gushing up out of manhole covers in the middle of the road, as was happening today! The flood wasn’t too bad today – it’s been a lot worse. Back in 2014 twenty cars were written off when holidaymakers came back from visiting the islands to find water up to the car windows! There was only one vehicle there this morning - a big artic which drove off just after I'd taken my picture, which I've put on as an extra.

There’s a good reason for this flooding. The Black Linn, the burn which flows alongside the car park, is obviously in spate and if the tide is in, there’s nowhere for the water to go, so it floods the car park. The whole of this commercial development is known as Lochavullin, which is the anglicised version of the Gaelic name Loch a' Mhuilinn, which means ‘the loch of the mill’. So what do you do if you have a loch, otherwise a lake, just where you want to build a commercial development? You fill it in, of course, and build on it! Why do people never learn?

Quote of the Day:

Gilbert Fowler White  - “Floods are acts of God, but flood losses are largely acts of man.“