Scotsman.com News - Storm damage set to create new Hebridean islands

Well, no, not exactly.

I have to disagree somewhat with reporter Murdo Macleod and his headline writer at The Scotsman. What's on the verge of happening is that existing islands might be gashed into smaller bits. While this would result in multiple islands where there was one, leaving each fragment in need of a name, I wouldn't want to call it creating new islands. It would be the same old islands, subdivided.

(If an underwater volcano gets really cooking and pumps out a whole lot of magma, that's creating a new island.)

Plus there's another worry for these particular islands, less visually dramatic perhaps, but serious - the islands could remain intact but with freshwater lochs flooded by salt water. Saltwater is generally a very bad substitute for fresh water.

And these are inhabited islands. Ouch.