The island where watching storm waves is a tradition

Wave watching during a storm is something of a tradition for people living on an island on the south coast of England.

So while most people were happy to be dry inside, Sam Rod who in lives on Portland in Dorset headed out into weather to see the nearly nine-metre-high tidal surge during Storm Goretti.

"About 20:30 GMT I came up here, and I left at about 23:00. It's always exciting," he explained.

"It was dark when the high tide came in and the swell did come up, my house shakes pretty bad and that's how I know it's going to be rough" he said.

The bad weather saw Dorset Police shut the main road on and off the island for a few hours overnight.

Sam makes sure to watch the waves at a safe distance away from the coastline, usually on top of a hill: "Some winters we don't get a bad storm and then other winters we get two or three good ones and the odd one does get like this.

"I can remember doing it since I was a little kid with my parents and that we'd always come down because it's a bit of a Portland tradition."

Portland Beach Road, which links Weymouth with Portland, was closed for several hours as waves crashed over the causeway.

This is not unusual for the area and happens most winters because of heavy rain and flooding and the road is surrounded by a beach and harbour, so the water often rises during bad weather.

One of the biggest storms that Sam saw was in February 2014 when Portland Beach Road was shut twice.

That year the waves at Chesil Beach measured up to about 6m (20ft) high.

In 2021, Chesil Beach on Portland saw a "large freak wave" throw a member of a coastguard team into a stone wall.

A local crowd had gathered to watch the 30ft [9m] wave and hit one of the local pubs after breaching the local sea defences.