⚠️ Storm Éowyn - Fri 24.01.25 (**Please read Mod Instruction in OP.**)

peterofthebr

Is there any playback(interactive) maps that I can see the recorded wind in my area? . would like to replay HD maps with details to study the gusts and see what time evening got blown away here

Meteorite58

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123128673#Comment_123128673

Here is the gust achieve for the 24th on Meteociel. If you click on the station you can get a lot more detailed data including wind direction , pressure , rainfall etc.

https://www.meteociel.fr/observations-meteo/vent-rafales.php?archive=1&region=uk&mode=0&jour=24&mois=1&annee=2025&heure=0&mode=0&sub=OK

Dazler97

I see the storm is officially on wiki but I thought that highest gust windspeed was in Galway not Scotland

Jakey Rolling

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123127434#Comment_123127434

It has made me cringe to watch our "cutting edge" NBI broadband fiber being run through the branches of trees along the roadside. I'm still waiting for the last 400m of fiber to reach us (it will be ducted I'm told), but as it stands I'd be more confident that our current wireless broadband would be more reliable in a storm.

MacDanger

Has the impact of the storm made anyone consider going with starlink vs a traditional internet provider?

I'd prefer not to support starlink and I probably won't change but I've definitely thought about it

kyote00

I’d live in a cave before I’d give that egomaniacal **** any more money. Looking forward to the day I can wave him goodbye on his voyage to mars

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123129399#Comment_123129399

prosaic

Why has Scotland so much less power outage? Lower wind speed, lower population density, hardier network?

FastFullBack

Have Starlink at the moment and will definitely be keeping it as a backup once NBI is available for me. I have 2 NBI cables ripped in 2 less than 500 meters from me...

irishgeo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123129342#Comment_123129342

SIRO advertising itself as reliable. Ha. Mine has been down since the storm. My provider says ESB have banned SIRO from the poles so it won't be fixed until the ESB are finished repairs. Could be 2 weeks out. I'll be demanding a refund for the days my service was not provided.

eeepaulo

Has anyone who has been without power and has a smart meter logged into their account recently?

Just wondering if the electric companies have been estimating usage?

Be a right kick in the teeth if people start getting bills for that period, you'll get the money back but still.

Bishop of hope

I have a 3 router and sim here still. Got connected to fibre in october and its been out since the storm. Last week I got a 3 sim and topped up by 15 euro and put it in the router, unlimited for a month.Good value and working fine.

sryanbruen

Looks like Mace Head's max sustained wind for Éowyn was 143 km/h. Gusts are still under review. As per Met Éireann site

12 km/h above the old national record now from 1945

sryanbruen

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123129121#Comment_123129121

Cairnwell is a mountain with the station 928m above sea level, not comparable.

OldRio

Big guns arrived yesterday to clear the road.

Robwindstorm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123130139#Comment_123130139

Right, I'm ready to start tackling mine with my small gun

Kutebride

Lots chainsaw sounds in NE Galway this morning. My sister got power restored Day Nine then water went again. Maybe its back again. 12 miles towards Dunmore no power. We spotting all the trees down on our visit to the home turf today.

Pretzill

Still without power here day 11 - hopeful as I saw a convoy of ESB looking trucks heading towards the village - and the forest clearing is going on days at this stage- ut is the weirdest feeling to be without the routine of electrical appliances for this long period of time - It is like life is standing still for thousands of us.

JJayoo

100+ Sitkas to process

Cluedo Monopoly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123130448#Comment_123130448

It is the most satisfying outdoor job but it's hard labour too.

JJayoo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123130462#Comment_123130462

Only if you have an agreeable chainsaw.....

Wompa1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123129399#Comment_123129399

Ordered it as a backup as I work from home. I have a big virtual event coming up and there are still poles down all around the area. I can't trust that there won't be disruptions. I did a lot of research in hopes I could find a good alternative. It seems for the foreseeable future there is no good equivalent. I don't like giving the pr1ck money but it is what it is for now. I should add, I don't have mobile reception in my house at all.

Wompa1

I counted 11 ESB vehicles on the M18 on Saturday. I'd say they are flat out!

peterofthebr

Just passing comment.. I'm fed up with the Internet infustructure here. Strongly will now be looking to use starlink. I believe it needs little power to use the antenna and it's reliability is good. A bit dear when I last looked.. but seen antenna running off solar setup.. So if u had solar to power laptop and it you could continue to wfh.

joujoujou

Slowly catching up with the news here. Was lucky enough to have power restored after just 5 days, my neigbours though were not so lucky. They are on different connector and their connector literally no longer exists. The forest it was located in went completely down, also entirely blocking local road on the length of 300 metres. Road's been cleared by County Council, the forest is being prepared for ESB guys to have entry to rebuild the connector from scratch.

Here's what used to be a forest:

The digger with harvesting attachment used by tree surgeon:

Here, what's left off the connector: top left: a bracket which was on top of the pole, top right: bottom part of the pole left, below: LV cable tidied up a bit.

Finally, few of my thoughts: shouldn't law be changed/amended in terms of public liability? Let me explain: the poles and/or wires extremely rarely go down by themselves, they're taken down by falling trees most of the time. And those trees are on the land that belong to someone. So why not make the owner responsible for damage caused by their property?

FishOnABike

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123130690#Comment_123130690

Good luck trying to get any infrastructure across any property if that was the case.

DayInTheBog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123130590#Comment_123130590

Starlink needs power. Power gone and so is your internet. Granted you could get solar, batteries and a change over switch, but that's useful as long as the battery has a charge

DayInTheBog

The owner of the infrastructure needs to be held accountable to ensure it's maintained and not left sticking in the ground for 20 years to rot and not erect poles in forests.

OldRio

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123130756#Comment_123130756

The owner of the land gets plenty of cash. Part of that deal should be maintenance of infrastructure. Either by forestry or owner.

zell12

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123130501#Comment_123130501

Quite a number of mainland UK National Grid vehicles around Galway county too. Must cost ESBN a fair bit on travelling, accommodation, meals,..

FishOnABike

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123130813#Comment_123130813

The problem would be that increasing obligations and liability would increase that cost, perhaps to the point where some will decide it's not worth the hassle at any cost / price.

joujoujou

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123130782#Comment_123130782

The forest I posted pictures from was not there when infrastructure has been put through the land. The duty should lie on both infrastructure owners and landowners to keep things safe and reliable. AFAIK many countries were able to implement that somehow. But that needs cooperation, either triggered by mutual agreement or enforced by law.

Dazler97

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123130082#Comment_123130082

I know but then they shouldn't have included it as the highest gust

Robwindstorm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123130158#Comment_123130158

I still have to saw through the main truck of this old lady but I am pleasantly surprised there's no ash dieback on it's main limbs. She was as healthy as a trout but was ripped up from her roots.

Just on which came first 'the hen or the egg' or in this instance the ' trees or the poles', I've planted trees under farm schemes and your not aloud plant within an asses roar of over head wires. Not sure about the multi national plantations

snowstreams

I see starlink runs off 12v & needs up to 100w but averages around 40w when in use.
so you could run it off a standard camping lifepo4 battery for 12 hours or so.
Your best off having a way to charge it from a generator or your car rather than solar though.

Thorny Queen

I have been in north, south, east and west Donegal over the last week and I have never seen the likes of it in all my life and we had the 1998 storm bad.

I saw literally half forests down like matchsticks...but not uniformly falling in the same direction, trees falling all over the shop. I suppose that's why there is a lot of power outages still.

It's truly incredible that there was only one fatality (RIP) in all of this. Even my local hospital had a massive tree fall parallel to the building. If it had fallen in on top of roof, I loathe to think what would have happened.

Bocadilloo

Just watched virgin media news to get the update on the outages. Not popular news anymore so a very short update. They are more interested in the Grammy's and what's happening in the US.

Listening to VM news report on world topics is like listening to a bunch of kids explaining religion.

Cluedo Monopoly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123131126#Comment_123131126

I have seen the same in local mixed forests. An area with a load of trees that seem to have fallen on top of each other going different directions. I can only imagine what it could have been like at the time. I wonder did we lose many birds that night.

PixelCrafter

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123129491#Comment_123129491

Lower average wind speeds and hit areas with very sparse populations.

Irish commentary also keeps underplaying just how much of an outlier we are on one-off scatter development. The local distribution networks here are absolutely enormous for the number of houses served due to the 'pattern' of development.

OldRio

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123130840#Comment_123130840

To be honest that's fine. If they want to take the money without the responsibility well feck em

Wompa1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123130774#Comment_123130774

For mine, I have 2 UPS backups. Power goes, they kick in and can drive power to Starlink and laptop when the battery is running low…only concerned with being covered when its absolutely critical. I have a small generator but it isn't really worth 2 sh1ts. In a few months, I will probably buy a big f*ck off generator capable of going to the mains.

Odelay

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123130813#Comment_123130813

Plenty of cash? There is no payment for single poles. nothing, not a penny.

sundodger5

As much as i would like to have a sustainable backup power supply following the storm it just doesn't make financial sense.

I can probably pick up something that will keep most of the house running for a couple of grand.

Not getting much in the line of solar panels and batteries for that.

Maybe I am wrong so I would be happy to get opinions.

peterofthebr

Allot of forestry damage alright, can see huge gaps on forests from roads. 80,000 hectares of trees gone. Mostly where thinning was done. Guess we can stop importing Brazilian chippings for the power plants for a while.

EletricMan

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123131675#Comment_123131675

Get a AVR generator and a changeover switch. Solar is only good if the sun is shining, which in winter months isn't too often and you would need a large battery 10kwh at least to keep the house going over night. I have solar and a generator.

DellyBelly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123129420#Comment_123129420

Agree completely...i persuaded my father from getting a Tesla for the same reason...hate seeing them on the road these days...

Cluedo Monopoly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123128772#Comment_123128772

This pic shows the punch in the guts Ireland got.

Pa ElGrande

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123131675#Comment_123131675

https://twitter.com/ESBNetworks/status/1883988501903048826

I am in a part of the country that gets several power outages a year. Most of this is just maintenance for several hours, I can tolerate that. However, I am 200 meters above sea level, this means I have a higher probability to experience severe conditions such as snow and severe wind storms being not far from the Atlantic on a south facing slope. Every 8 to 10 years that does happen, this year I experienced long outages due to snow bringing down lines, but was not as badly impacted by the wind storm, though lines had to be de-energised for 12 hours and other short intervals to allow for repairs across the area. We have been without power for 2 weeks in past decades (wind storm) and when it snows heavily, I am housebound.

In addition to the ESBs operating advice in the twitter link. You will need somewhere to securely store the generator out of sight and out of mind (desirable and liftable item), you will need fuel and somewhere to store it - calculate the consumption rate for the model and load, this will get mighty expensive when the outage is prolonged, but so is freezing and any sickness that goes with that. You will have to calculate the minimum power requirements when sizing it - water pump, lights, heating, kettle and whatever essentials. (my wood burner control panel would not operate -was able to fall back to oil boiler.). Don't forget maintenance to check it starts, once a year when the weather is good, watch out for "stale" fuel, see E10 petrol and water.

Donegal Ken

This shows the max wind gust overall, will be interesting to see how these differ after the data is reviewed.

standardg60

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123130974#Comment_123130974

Tree roots don't account for ivy adding extra 'sail' in a storm.

I'm gonna be the first to say Ash dieback isn't going to have as much impact as first feared, those calling for preemptive action may be proven wrong.

standardg60

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123129342#Comment_123129342

Just on this has anyone seen eir working on their infrastructure? Wires on the ground and poles broken in Longford with no sign of being fixed.