WIND!

The entire city of Glasgow shut down on account of wind one day. I had a French class at noon that was cancelled. I soon found out the entire University would shut down that day for wind. So even if I wanted to be studious and do some coursework in the library, I’d have to wait until the next day.

Honestly, I think people were just keen for a day off. It was getting close to Christmas and about a month prior, half the employed population (the public sector) was on strike for a day, to what seemed little effect. Marc was the only one in the office that day and couldn’t actually get any work done that afternoon as every business he called was closed due to the wind.

We couldn’t really figure out what all the fuss was about. Sure the wind was howling against the windows but other than that we couldn’t make out any problems. So we decided it would be a great time to venture into town to get some Christmas shopping done, as we assumed people would be shut up at home safe from the dangerous wind. We were right, it was a ghost town! And Glasgow is known for its shopping so there are always plenty of people about. Not that day, the worst of the damage I saw was a lit up hanging Christmas ornament that had fallen into the street and blocked some traffic.

Perhaps there was some potentially dangerous situations avoided by shutting everything down on account of the wind, but to me it just kind of seemed like an overreaction. Little did I know that wind would be back and ruin some of my travel plans… Marc and I were on a train home from Inverness after spending the holidays with his parents up north. An hour in and we get an announcement from the train conductor saying they will be terminating service at Perth (an hour away from Glasgow) due to adverse weather conditions in Glasgow.

What were the adverse weather conditions? None other than wind! So we’re thinking ok, maybe it’s just a wind storm, we’ll hang out for a couple of hours on the train and they’ll start up service after. An hour into waiting at the Perth train station, we get kicked off the train as it left to go back north. We then get a bit antsy wondering if and when they will start up service again. Oh, and according to the rail service, no buses were running because the highways have shut down as well. We find out there is brush blocking the tracks at several points along the route and it doesn’t seem like rail service will be a viable option if we want to get home that night (Marc had work the next day).

We find out that in fact buses are running and book the next one out. The driver is quite funny about the whole situation and begs us to hang on. The drive itself isn’t bad except for a couple of points when you could feel the wind pushing the bus. We also drove by a huge lorry (semi-truck) turned over in a ditch off to the side of the road, that wasn’t very encouraging. So I guess the wind was a pretty big deal. 200 mph is hurricane type wind. I thought I came from the windy city, but I think Glasgow deserves an honourable mention; ‘’Glasgow, the unofficial windy city.’’ We did eventually make it home safe and sound and only about three hours later than scheduled.