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

Rikand

We lost power at 4am and it's still not back. One of the neighbours told us it's not expected back till sunday. Shedloads of trees down on all the roads around here.

This is also the first time today I've had a decent enough connection to browse, so I'm looking forward to reading all the stats later on.

North of Athlone

Ros4Sam24

Snow here North Ros, obviously not Eowyn related but same day, weather whiplash!

M.T. Cranium

Will add Belmullet to list, probably peaked at 130-145 after 06h. As I commented earlier, 940 mb pressure there indicates a 937 mb centre likely situated to its west, given wind speeds recorded at time, and buoy M4 had a lowest hourly reading of 939.2, could have been 937 or 938 between hours as a 30 km/hr wind was blowing at observation time.

So ARPEGE did a great job on consistently predicting sub-940 central pressures. GFS and ECM were a bit late to that party, and ICON (as far as I can recall) never dropped below 945 and also had a non-verifying dumb-bell shaped low with its s.e. component tracking through Mayo. That didn't happen. GEM was pretty consistent also if a bit underplayed.

This was probably about what happened in Jan 1839 give or take 5 mb and 10 knots. I think eventually it will rank ahead of Darwin but only by a narrow margin. I would rank it top ten all-time anyway, including 1903 and 1961, 54, 88, 97, 98 … question for sryanbruen, are you aware of a reference to a 200 km/hr gust with the Jan 74 storm at Kilkee? I have that stat in my memory but I can't recall where I read it.

Eoinbmw

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123096186#Comment_123096186

He is the wind!

corsav6

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123096333#Comment_123096333

I have a friend living down in Glosh, beside Blacksod but at a higher elevation. His personal station recorded 156km/h at around 6am. Again it's nothing official but a good indication of what it was like down there.

Myself and the family went to my mother's in Swinford for the night. She's in an estate and far more sheltered. Despite that the wind was still fierce, as strong as I've experienced at our own house outside Newport. Only damage was a blown down fence between her neighbours garden and hers.

We drove back and there were several trees down on the N5 between Swinford and Castlebar and at least 6 shed roofs in various ditches. We seen 1 steel shed roof on the road but there was no shed to be seen so I'm not sure how far that travelled.

Back home and our concrete post fence at the back is flat. We only put it up last year and it was sturdy. Trampoline was well tied down but it's all bent out of shape the other side of the garden.

No power or mobile data for miles. I have a 12v battery hooked up to the router so we have internet at least. There was 600+ people without power on our fault on powercheck but that's dropped to just over 100 now so hoping they're working on it.

So that was the worst storm I can remember, but luckily there was no significant damage and once the power comes back we'll be back to normal.

realdanbreen

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123095880#Comment_123095880

Why were you out driving at 6am, the height of a Red warning!

DellyBelly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123096438#Comment_123096438

Unfortunately the same thing in Donegal and it resulted in the death of someone. Obviously people don't take the warnings seriously enough

.Donegal.

Power is back thanks to the esb crews or as my dad still calls them the P & T ha. Snow and hail showers this evening. Feel sorry for those who will be a week without electricity.

Edit- covering of snow on the ground now

pureza

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123096303#Comment_123096303

Sky news at 9pm are reporting 118mph in Co Clare during the storm

zisdead

So I was in Trim last night and the wind was rough from 3am to 5 am especially. For 30 mins either side of about 4.20 am I'd say it was violent but didn't quite match but was close to what I experienced in the mid 90s Xmas Storm.

So it was probably the storm of the century for me ( 2000 to 2025) but definitely was not the one in one Hundred year storm it could have been. It was close though.

To me two things were needed for that to happen. Although the storm last night had all the potential the main thing that happened was the string jet that was forecast to shoot right across the midlands probably only made it 5 miles inland somewhere around mayo.

Second we would have needed the storm to move more or less directly east / west somewhere roughly along a line from Donegal to Antrim exactly as Darragh did . Not up along the west coast and out to Scotland as this storm did.

All models were pretty clear the track was never going to be east/west but the lack of a string jet was what the models missed ( they hit the pressure bang on)

So the potential was there for this to be the nationwide " biggie " but we caught some lucky breaks. Fair ?

magicbastarder

i've only just stumbled across this - UK met office doing a deep dive on how Eowyn formed - the video was made a few days ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uik9bShm8E

Oíche Na Gaoithe Móire

Harmonie came out of this storm very impressively.

While the others were predicting 130km gusts for South East areas like Carlow town, it got it bang on giving this likelihood a 20% chance. 113km was recorded in Oak Park.

Gonzo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123096461#Comment_123096461

Definitely here in Meath the storm did not produce the wind gusts forecasted by the models (up to 150km/h). I think Dunsany managed to get to 113km/h last night, nowhere near the projected wind gusts thankfully. For this area Darragh and Eowyn were fairly similar with intensity. The fact that the storm drifted up the west coast and on into Scotland certainly diverted from a far more serious situation. I'm very thankful the projected wind speeds of 130km/h to 150km/h did not happen here and we dodged a bullet with an outcome less severe.

Power went around 5.11am last night and for me it didn't get restored until after 3pm. Hopefully this is the last of the wind storm power cuts for this season.

The loudest and more scary wind storm I can ever remember here was the one in the mid 1990s I think it was Christmas Eve and that storm was a whole other ball game in terms of ferocity and scaryness with tree's and branches down all over the place.

M.T. Cranium

That peak of 109 km/hr at Mullingar is deceptively impressive as past experience tells me it will normally under-perform due to a poor exposure to actual winds in the area, probably means it was near 130 at better exposed locations.

I added Belmullet with an estimate of 145 km/hr which could turn out to be low by 20-30.

Scotland peak winds at low elevations near 140 km/hr, currently at Cairnwell (933m) 144G206 (km/hr) (temp -3 C).

Tiree had a pressure of 942 mb at 09z, low is currently near Shetland, at about 948 mb.

Oscar Bravo

From Met Eireann

A sting jet can be observed in Storm Éowyn satellite imagery around 4-5am this morning. It seems to be the cause of the extremely strong winds observed at that time, including the provisional all-time records wind gust of 183 km/h and sustained wind speed of 135 km/h recorded in Mace Head.

A sting jet is a narrow airstream that emerges from within the end of a hook-shaped region of cloudiness near the centre of low pressure (in the troposphere) and accelerates as it descends to the surface.

Sting jet development appears more likely for explosively intensifying storms and, when present, sting jets produce some of the strongest surface-level winds, as it was the case this morning

axe2grind

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123096430#Comment_123096430

See thread from a few years ago.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2057826064/highest-wind-gust-ever-recorded-ireland-124mph-200kph

Kilkeel 12th Jan 1974.

This 108kn gust has been peer reviewed and they conclude that it "is almost certainly incorrect"

See paper here

https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10082637/1/Saunders_Northern%20Ireland%27s%20longstanding%20record%20wind%20gust%20is%20almost%20certainly%20incorrect_AAM.pdf

In short, the recording instrument recorded other gusts of 190kn(twice) & 162kn. These were dismissed as erroneous, but it seems the 108kn gust wasn't.

Rain from the West

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123096430#Comment_123096430

MT, here's a Met Eireann PDF format document of the January 1974 storm.

98 kt gust at Malin plus a 93 kt gust at Shannon Airport seem to be the highest in the Republic.

https://www.met.ie/cms/assets/uploads/2017/08/Jan1974_Storm.pdf

EDIT: incorrect. Above figures are from the "Debbie" 1961 storm as pointed out by @axe2grind below.

axe2grind

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123096644#Comment_123096644

The 98 kt and 93 kt gusts in that table were from Debbie in Sep 1961

mikeecho

I didn't know that it is, but these events never affect me.

I'm sheltered from all angles, and have the cork snow shield fully activated.

Feel the pain of those affected. Must be a nightmare to lose a roof or worse.

Rain from the West

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123096697#Comment_123096697

Indeed they were. My mistake……..

JohnySwan

Didn't think I'd get the scope out after the storm, IIRC it was the same with the last one we had.

DayInTheBog

Surprised no one has posted this Real satellite image taken today showing the force of the storm. 🫣

Rougies

Out of the high res models, Arpege nailed it imo, especially in keeping the stronger gusts further north way before other models got on board with that. Harmonie was good too, but was keeping things further south until the last minute whilst Arpege was sitting there smugly saying "told you so!"

Both did excellently well for the recent snow event too.

Arome is too high res for it's own good sometimes, kinda like an Arpege trying too hard, but I can see models like that coming scarily accurate over the next few years.

Straight Talker

I finally got through to a relative on Inisheer. Mobile phone reception only came back on the Aran Islands about an hour ago. They said they have been without power since the early hours of this morning. That fault is not showing on ESB Power Check although there is a fault affecting ten properties on Inishmaan showing up on it.

mcburns07

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123096540#Comment_123096540

Christmas Eve 1997 was the big one for me down here in Cork, serious damage done that day.

otherfrog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123096750#Comment_123096750

Thanks for this update - I have been worried about the communities out there.

Hippodrome Song Owl

Power just gone in the past hour in Celbridge. And I had literally just used the flask of hot water to fill a hot water bottle and not refilled it immediately (intended to before bed) as I thought we were out of the woods on that front. Rookie mistake!

I doubt it's any sort of serious issue up this way, though there are still roads blocked by trees, but obviously concerned this could last a long time due to the massive pressure on the ESB teams elsewhere. At least the heat had been on before it went so I won't be too cold til morning at least. And for the first time ever my mobile network is still working during the outage - so at that's one positive.

On another note, my windows - both N and S facing - are also covered in that salty residue reported previously.

M.T. Cranium

Report on 11-12 Jan 1974 indicates gust to 94 kn at Cork.

Looking at maps, a similar track to Eowyn, but from a source west of Azores, and around circulation of a stronger low s.e. of Iceland. Also peaked overnight.

Rougies

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123096739#Comment_123096739

Also a pic posted from northern Scotland earlier… I think he'll be happier in his new habitat

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123096750#Comment_123096750

Island failures often show as being on the mainland at/around the location the cables head out.

I've an island house (that I'm not in now) and it appears to have been offline since about 0300, but the fault is showing on the mainland; as it has every previous time there's been an outage.

If it's not back by the morning I'm planning to go up and bin the contents of the freezer next weekend, along with checking that it still has a roof!