Storm Ophelia Arrives In Ireland!! Wow!!!
Storm Ophelia arrived Monday. OMG! it was the worst storm in 50 years. I saw it coming in from the sea in a black sky and red sun. It was scary. There were few casualties and deaths as we listened to the experts and stayed in home. It was the easternmost Atlantic major hurricane on record.It caused one of five weather buoys to break its moorings off the Irish coast, and the highest individual wave recorded was 17.81 metres. Ophelia did not break existing wind speed records over land, as the top gust of 191km/h recorded during Ophelia at Fastnet lighthouse off the south-west coast was at 200 feet or almost 70 metres.Ophelia had sustained winds (10-minute mean) of 111km per hour at Roches Point, off Cork, and gusts of up to 156km per hour on land. At 20:15 on the 15th, ‘status red’ was extended to all of Ireland, and all public education services were confirmed as cancelled. All public transport previously scheduled within the red alert zone were cancelled including bus, rail and ferry journeys. Bus Éireann announced the cancellation of school bus services for the west of Ireland after Met Éireann issued a rare Status Red warning affecting the south western and western counties of Wexford, Waterford, Cork, Kerry, Clare, Mayo and Galway.The Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government confirmed members of the public should not make any unnecessary journeys especially travelling within the red level warning areas and the department reiterated the storm is potential risk to life.
ESB Group confirmed that more than 360,000 customers were without power in the wake of the storm. Two people, a man in Dundalk and a woman in Aglish, County Waterford, were killed when trees fell on their cars.In County Tipperary, a third fatality occurred when a man was clearing a fallen tree with a chainsaw.On 17 October, it was estimated that Ophelia had caused €1 billion ($1.18 billion USD) losses in Ireland, for the most part for the shutdown of economic activities the day of its passage.The last tropical revolving storm of its type, Storm Debbie in 1961, claimed 18 lives on the island – 12 in the Republic and six in the North.
Climate scientist Reindert Haarsma of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, said that climate change is likely to cause Europe to see more hurricanes like Ophelia as the oceans get warmer, although they were still comparing their model’s results with those from other climate centres.
Storm Brian Over Ireland. It arrived Thursday and peaked Friday night and Saturday day! What a week!
Storm Brian brought high winds and flash flooding. It caused major flooding in Limerick, Galway, Kildare and Dublin. It forced the closure of top tourism attractions and severe rail delays as ‘weather bomb’ washes over country.The centre of Storm Brian which brought flooding to parts of the country this morning has passed the east of the country and moved over Britain.Storm Ophelia was a much stronger storm.”The highest gust we recorded from Ophelia was 156k/hr, while the highest gust we’ve had so far from Storm Brian is just shy of 115k/hr. Storm Brian is hampering work that would have been ongoing to restore power. Peoples fears are heightened due to the fact that roadside trees and hedges, roof tiles or slates may have been weakened or dislodged as a result of Storm Ophelia.
ANNETTE J DUNLEA 
You must be logged in to post a comment.