The water supply on a Hebridean island was repeatedly shut down at the weekend, and the number of people taking on the ice bucket craze was blamed.
The flow from the reservoir on Colonsay was automatically turned off four times when drainage rose above normal levels.
The sudden rush among the island’s 124 population to get soaked for charity triggered the alarms designed to detect burst water mains.
However water supply to customers was not affected by the disruption.
A coffee shop owner on the island, who was aware that the water supply was shut down, said: “The ice bucket challenge has been very popular here. I would say about 80% of people on the island have done it. It has been very well publicised and it’s for a great cause.”
A spokesman for Scottish Water said: “No customers were left without water on Colonsay over the weekend.
“The water treatment works (WTW) that supplies the island monitors the supply flow and reacts to any out of the ordinary flow activity by automatically shutting down. This does not impact water supply to customers, however, an operative does then need to go to the works and restart it.
“As a result of higher than average flows out of the network our Colonsay operative was called out to the WTW three times on Saturday and once on Sunday morning.”
Bags of ice were also in short supply at the weekend in supermarkets across Inverness.
A spokesman for the Tesco Extra store at Inverness Retail Park, said: “I think given the popularity of the ice bucket challenge, we have seen an increase in people buying ice. We sold out over the weekend and on Monday but we have replenished our stocks now.”
Morrisons Inverness store manager, Hugh Urquhart, said: “We have definitely seen ice sales rise in the last couple of weeks, probably by about one fifth.
“It’s great to see so many people having a bit of fun while also raising money for charity.”
A spokesman for Morrisons said the city centre store did not sell out and that the year-on-year increase was widespread across other stores in the country.
A spokeswoman for Inverness’ two Aldi stores said: “Our July sales are higher than our August sales and so I don’t think it supports the ice bucket theory.”