School has been put on hold, hospitals are being evacuated, transportation has been disrupted, but Alastair Mennie will continue to get in the water. Across the UK, Storm Desmond has been wreaking havoc. The Environment Agency estimates 5,200 homes have been affected by flooding in Cumbria and Lancashire. Power outages and structural damages are continuing to take their toll. The storm has set a new record for the amount of rain that fell in Cumbria in a day. Even as the disastrous numbers pile up, a select few are attempting to have some fun with nature.
(You can’t fight nature, so you might as well interact with it. Right?)
Alastair Mennie was among those select few — charging Northern Ireland’s 20-foot swells just after the waves began to clean up. Mennie grew up surfing on the Northern Ireland shores in the winters and surfing big waves in international competitions. He’s even appeared on the YouTube series “Man vs. Wave.”
Now, he’s a rider on the storm — as these pictures show:
