Spatters of rain against the glass

The trailing and ragged cloak-tails of storm Gerrit are lashing against our southwest-facing bedroom window, flinging spatters of rain against the glass. It actually isn’t that chilly but the sound of the storm is making me shiver. “Storm Gerrit has been named by the Met Office, with several weather warnings in force from Wednesday. It will bring strong winds and heavy rain to many parts of the UK on Wednesday, with wintry hazards also likely, especially across northern Scotland.”  Gerrit is a Dutch name meaning spear, and certainly the rain is striking our house like spears!  It’s mighty powerful here, so I can only imagine what it’s like in the north of these islands, it must be so so much worse and- there have been reports on the news of floods and damage to buildings and transport links.

Earlier today we had the forecast heavy rain, blustering torrents of rain – we were driving on the motorway and suddenly traffic slowed almost to a crawl as a downpour down-poured. We were fortunate that all the drivers were sensible, all slowed to drive safely through, until the rain relented and our wipers could cope and we could see clearly again.  Now the wind is throwing the rain around, but fortunately it’s more the scattered showers sort of rain. Tomorrow is forecast to be better, some sun, a lot of cloud, and rain again in the afternoon. Looking ahead to the weekend and New Year’s Eve, when it’s the Dolphin tradition to go out into the road outside the pub to see in the New Year and sing Auld Lang’sd Syne, guess what – rain is forecast!