Was it really 20 years ago this week since...

billy the squid

we were feeling the effects of Hurricane Charley?

From the archives of the Limerick Chronicle, August 1986

CITY ESCAPES BIG CHARLIE

LIMERICK had a lucky escape from the worst effects of the high winds which swept the region yesterday evening.

County areas however, had floods, downed trees and power cuts.

A spokesman at the Shannon Met Office, which recorded winds of 48 mph said that it "sounded worse than it was" and that the average wind speed was about 28 mph.

The tail end of Hurricane "Charlie" caused a trail of damage along the East coast and severe flooding in many parts.

Parts of County Limerick were badly effected by flooding during the night, although the city remained relatively free. Newcastle West, Kilmallock, and the Foynes Glin area had instances of flooding and local fire brigades helped to elieviate the problem.

Trees are reported down at Roundhill on the road between Ballina, Co. Tipperary and the main Dublin Road, and at Ross, about three and a half miles from Killaloe on the "back road" to Limerick.

Although the city in the main was not affected by power cuts, late yesterday evening, quite a few areas in a wide radius around Limerick had long power cuts.

Some pockets in rural areas were still out by daybreak, and ESB engineers were at work throughout the morning trying to restore supplies.

A cow was killed on a farm near Murroe when a falling tree brought down a power line about 4.30pm yesterday.

Power was not restored to the Murroe-Brittas district until about midnight.

Later in the evening at about 10.15pm, there was a widespread cut in the district between Garryowen and Newport which lasted about 20 minutes affecting the city suburbs at Castletroy and Monaleen, and the area which the Westward Cable passes for the entire city.

Interesting that one of the severe storms in living memory and the Chronicle is concerned that people cannot get BBC1 and BBC2

mike65

Don't see any mention of d'telly. Anyway, I remember the day in question cos I was hanging out of my bedroom window with a bunch of tacks and sheets of plastic as I sought to protect the fairly rotton frames/putty from the worse of what was coming (not helped that I was facing directly into the wind). When it came to protecting the opening window I had a stroke of genius - Tack the plastic to the inside of the top of the frame and pull the plastic round under the window pull hard and close!

It worked just about

Mike.

darkman2

Heres a chart:

http://www.wetterzentrale.de/archive/ra/1986/Rrea00119860826.gif

Very windy but not a Hurricane. Hardly TS level either.:rolleyes:

Snowbie

There were a few trees uprooted along my mothers road alright,just the small ones but there was a larger tree still to this day that has leened over from the storm.There was flooding up off the malahide estuary with the easterly winds.Know anything bout this DM?.
20 years ago and remember if it was yesterday.

darkman2

Snowbie wrote:

There were a few trees uprooted along my mothers road alright,just the small ones but there was a larger tree still to this day that has leened over from the storm.There was flooding up off the malahide estuary with the easterly winds.Know anything bout this DM?.
20 years ago and remember if it was yesterday.

I now about it in terms of a certain Micheal Fish but I was only an infant so I dont rememebr anything about it. From the charts ive seen looked rough alright:)

road_high

It was worse on the east coast at the time. Here in Kilkenny, all the rivers flooded. at points you wouldn't believe if you'd seen them at normal levels.
Wonder how we'd cope today given the traffic levels on the roads, imagine if they flooded with water as well as being flooded with water!

Trogdor

I was not yet born when this occured but have heard many stories of how our house( near the mouth of the river Dargle, Bray) was flooded.

trogdor

trogdor wrote:

I was not yet born when this occured but have heard many stories of how our house( near the mouth of the river Dargle, Bray) was flooded.

Oh yes I remember this one.It was windy ,there was no thunder(there was a lot of thunder with the Blizzard of jan '82 by the way), the main story was the quantity of Rain.
The main bridge over the avoca in Arklow survived but was closed for much of the day because the water was fast flowing over it.Now if you want to picture how much of a flood that was, the bridge would be 8 or 10 ft above the river normally.
Most other bridges didnt survive including the one into avoca village,which was just swept away.Loads of country roads around here were closed for a year or more while the bridges were being re built .
As for Bray at one point over night the water was 8ft deep and footage from that made the BBC news the following day.

Trogdor

Tristrame wrote:

Oh yes I remember this one.It was windy ,there was no thunder(there was a lot of thunder with the Blizzard of jan '82 by the way), the main story was the quantity of Rain.
The main bridge over the avoca in Arklow survived but was closed for much of the day because the water was fast flowing over it.Now if you want to picture how much of a flood that was, the bridge would be 8 or 10 ft above the river normally.
Most other bridges didnt survive including the one into avoca village,which was just swept away.Loads of country roads around here were closed for a year or more while the bridges were being re built .
As for Bray at one point over night the water was 8ft deep and footage from that made the BBC news the following day.

Yeh, my dad told me that the dam at turlough hill burst that night sending even more water down and there was an easterly gale the hole time sending the seawater up the river. He and my mum actually went out to Dun Laoighre in the storm to try and save my dad's boat. And just as he pulled back unto our driveway the exhaust started gurgling as it went under water. Appearantly he was finding dead fish everywhere for weeks along with a two foot layer of mud in and on everything:eek:

Mothman

An event that is certainly etched in my memory. While it was windy, it was the torrents and torrents of rain. It was like one of those thunder showers going on for hours....

My main memories are loads of trees down on the farm, about 20 in all. I did a 6 mile walk along some roads and everywhere looked as if a hurricane had hit. The local River Vartry was in huge flood. It's usually only a ft or 2, and it was a raging torrent 10 ft deep and 2 to 3 times its normal width, where it hadn't spilled out. The world famous Mount Usher Gardens through which the Vartry flows was torn to shreds

An excerpt from "Wild Wicklow" Nairn & Crowley 1998
...Hurricane Charlie for example, resulted in a record of over 200mm of rain at Kilcoole on the night of 25/26 August 1986. The River Dargle burst its banks and caused major flooding in the Bray area and the Avonmore River became such a raging torrent that it swept away at least 10 bridges, some of which were hundreds of years old.

I think the actual Kilcoole figure is 200.2mm. 270mm was recorded at the top of Kippure, though I've also heard that the gauge was washed away, and that the figure is estimated.

And BTW, I only recently learnt that is is in fact Charley and not Charlie, the latter is what all the media seem to call it.

And another BTW, is that this wasn't the Michael Fish one, that was the 87 storm.

mike65

..and that was'nt a hurricane either!

Mike.

billy the squid

mike65 wrote:

Don't see any mention of d'telly. Anyway, I remember the day in question cos I was hanging out of my bedroom window with a bunch of tacks and sheets of plastic as I sought to protect the fairly rotton frames/putty from the worse of what was coming (not helped that I was facing directly into the wind). When it came to protecting the opening window I had a stroke of genius - Tack the plastic to the inside of the top of the frame and pull the plastic round under the window pull hard and close!

It worked just about

Mike.

Westward Cable is now known as Chorus. When ever the cable went off it used to be front page news in the 80s. We had so little to worry about in those days.

nilhg

I remember the storm well, it took down almost all the elm trees in our area which had died from Dutch Elm disease in the previous few years. We had a field of wheat with a long line of them on its eastern edge and all of them fell into the standing crop, the poor field got a terrible bashing as not alone did it have to stand up to normal harvest traffic but every chainsaw owner in the locality was hauling timber out for weeks and all of this on absolutley sodden soil. It took that headland years to recover. If we had got a westerly of the same force all of them would have fell into my neighbours grass field instead.
Incidently the same field was harvested on August 9th this year the whole of summer 86 cant have been great.

netwhizkid

My parents were talking about this recently as it was before I was born and it gave our locality a severe lashing being on the west coast only 10kms inland. I have heard so many stories of it though

My father nearly got drowned in it as he tried desperately in vain to make home on tractor having abandoned the car and drove it into 5 feet of swollen river and it miracously brought him out of it, he still maintains that the tractor was blessed however it didn't bring him home he encountered a bridge which was not visible under at least 6 feet of water and had to stay at some welcoming person's house. Roads and bridges were washed away and he found dead salmon in fields about 600yds in from the river. I also reckon it was a catalyst for my own arrival as it was close to 9 months before my own birth

I hope it don't happen again as several new houses have now been built direct in the flood plains and if it does many of my neighbours will be homeless. 2004 Hurricane season seemed to send a lot of rain this way too I remember. Anyone see the programme on the History Channel it seems to suggest that New York will be hit by a Category 3 or 4 sometime this decade.

Snowbie

Yeah caught that programme last night.It would devastate new york if a direct hit was on the cards.

billy the squid

My father nearly got drowned in it as he tried desperately in vain to make home on tractor having abandoned the car and drove it into 5 feet of swollen river and it miracously brought him out of it, he still maintains that the tractor was blessed however it didn't bring him home he encountered a bridge which was not visible under at least 6 feet of water and had to stay at some welcoming person's house. Roads and bridges were washed away and he found dead salmon in fields about 600yds in from the river. I also reckon it was a catalyst for my own arrival as it was close to 9 months before my own birth

Unless that is where he met your mother then I would start asking questions

nacho libre

darkman2 wrote:

Heres a chart:

http://www.wetterzentrale.de/archive/ra/1986/Rrea00119860826.gif

Very windy but not a Hurricane. Hardly TS level either.:rolleyes:

How many hectopascals was it?
I can't make it out from the chart.

Miguel_Sanchez

Twenty years ago? Ah **** - I feel old now.

dloob

Ohh this is one I remember, back in my younger days.
I remeber it was windy with lots of rain I think we had some flooding trouble.
At the time our house was often hit by flooding from the streams on the mountains taking a shortcut through our house.
Sandbags diverted it down the yard this time and it dug quite a hole in the yard. Sometime later the council added some drains to divert that sort of flooding into the neighbouring field.
Other than that is wasn't too dramatic in Tipperary. There were lots of reports of flooding and fallen trees at the time.