THE WEE COUNTY appears to have got off lightly during Storm Isha, with flood resilience groups across Clacks insisting they “dodged a bullet.”

Storm Isha has been wreaking havoc across the UK, with some areas reporting winds over 100 mph.

High winds and rain battered Scotland on the night of Sunday, January 21, with flood resilience teams maintaining a close eye on their gauges.

As for Clackmannanshire, the winds remained strong but thankfully no floods were reported, with the burns and rivers remaining below the danger level.

A few trees were reported to have fallen down, blocking roads and causing diversions, but Clackmannanshire Council was quick to start clearing the roads on Monday morning.

Bryan Denny, team leader for the Alva Community Resilience Team, said: “We were obviously monitoring the situation.

“It got kind of close but not close enough, thankfully. I knew the rain was set to go off at around 9pm so we didn’t have any alarms and callouts.

“There was a tree down near where the Woodsman is near Fishcross, the road was closed but I’m not aware of anywhere else.

“We went down and cleaned up the Coalsnaughton burn in preparation for this but thankfully we’ve dodged another bullet again.”

Resilience teams across Clacks went out on Sunday evening to check their river gauges and flood prevention systems before the storm hit through the night.

Thankfully, the rain seemed to stop at around midnight, with the river and burn levels remaining in a normal position.

Ian Young, working with the Tillicoultry, Devonside and Coalsnaughton flood group, was relieved that Storm Isha missed Clacks.

“I was out last night but stopped at around 10pm,” he said. “The weather forecast had stated that the rain would abate at around midnight.

“The burn had been rising but we have an electronic gauge so I could do that on the internet and I knew how the river was doing as I have access to SEPA’s river gauge.

“Everything seemed to be within the limits of what we would expect and all the gullies in the town seemed to be dealing pretty well with it all.

“We didn’t think there was going to be any problem and fortunately there wasn’t so yet again we get off lightly.

“I did another check on Monday morning but everything seemed to be in order.”