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Are there too many weather warnings?

Mikewalsh

I saw another warning today for rain and wind no less

Shouldn't met eireann hold off on the warnings for the more extreme events

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Mountainsandh

Blud wrote: »

You do understand that the country has essentially shut down?

The independent is reporting a €160m cost to the economy. That stuff matters to some of us.

I was fully in agreement with everything ME did during Ophelia, but Jesus, this is being reported as most of the country having very little and those that got heavy snow it's 15cm or less (ignoring idiots basing their measurement on the drift in the corner of the garden). And it's closed the country!

Big freaking deal.
While you weren't making money others weren't making money either.
It sounds dangerously like what you are saying is that, because the state of the economy and possible loss in profits matter so much to you, it would have been ok to lose a few lives on the roads somewhere in Ireland in this event.

Blud

Mountainsandh wrote: »

Big freaking deal.
While you weren't making money others weren't making money either.
It sounds dangerously like what you are saying is that, because the state of the economy and possible loss in profits matter so much to you, it would have been ok to lose a few lives on the roads somewhere in Ireland in this event.

Jesus Christ. Don't infer that from my post.

You go ahead and nod along with a country wide red alert there good man. I'm off with my auld fella for a game of golf, which is mad really with all this red warning level snow, right?

Rikand

Mountainsandh wrote: »

Big freaking deal.
While you weren't making money others weren't making money either.
It sounds dangerously like what you are saying is that, because the state of the economy and possible loss in profits matter so much to you, it would have been ok to lose a few lives on the roads somewhere in Ireland in this event.

Irish_rat

Don't think the storm even hit limerick

Rikand

Irish_rat wrote: »

Don't think the storm even hit limerick

Mountains like the Galtees might have snow shielded you. Looking at some of the pictures from Clare, your part of the world should have been decimated

[Deleted User]

Blud wrote: »

You do understand that the country has essentially shut down?

The independent is reporting a €160m cost to the economy. That stuff matters to some of us.

I was fully in agreement with everything ME did during Ophelia, but Jesus, this is being reported as most of the country having very little and those that got heavy snow it's 15cm or less (ignoring idiots basing their measurement on the drift in the corner of the garden). And it's closed the country!

You need to look at the big picture here. Forecasting isn't an exact science. Read the posts here, Heavy snow in one area & none two miles away BUT the risk of blizzard conditions everywhere.

Most of the money you talk about was lost anyway. Without any Red warnings I saw the forecast & by Monday I decided my last service call appointment would be Wednesday & my next one on Monday coming.

With or without the Red alert peopl;e were panic buying. It's cheaper to close a school, creche or a business than to try run it with half the staff missing or no custom . I don't get the problem. It's two days. Enjoy it

Mountainsandh

Blud wrote: »

Jesus Christ. Don't infer that from my post.

You go ahead and nod along with a country wide red alert there good man. I'm off with my auld fella for a game of golf, which is mad really with all this red warning level snow, right?

Well in effect, if you disagree with the red warning for economics reasons, you are "allowing" for some contingent "damage". This of course would more than likely involve people.

At the very moment you are enjoying a game of golf, there could very well have been a school bus or a diligent worker crashing in dangerous road conditions elsewhere, were it not for the red warning.

Wanderer78

Economics and reality, as if our most predominant economic theories have much to do with reality! Enjoy the snow folks, and be safe.

crossman47

F-Stop wrote: »

You do understand that these are advisories, not law. No one is being forced to stay indoors. This is just an effort to limit the amount of harm that may happen. They are not monsters, they are acting in your best interest and not limiting your freedom in any way.

Thats exactly it and, when you hear about some of the idiots who went out in their cars last night and had to be rescued, you would despair. Some went to look at the planes at a closed airport! We claim to be an educated nation but nobody can teach common sense.

VonZan

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Beautiful day here in south Drogheda , much milder and no extra snow although it was very windy last night. I’m delighted and so are the birds. The media hype up so much just to make stories .

As someone who remembers 1982 and obviously also 2010 this event doesn’t even come close. It’s wall to wall and back to back media coverage now for everything and it’s tiresome. Jesus how did we all survive years ago without constant warnings from media and government ? I really think we are living in a nanny state and people are dependent on that. Nobody thinks for themselves . We need guidance on just about everything.

Yesterday was the worst day with freezing winds and blowing dry snow all day. All local supermarkets closed due to red alert so I wrapped up in hiking gear & walked 40 minutes to small shop and it was great to be out . As long as people use their heads they are fine. Most people can’t anymore and expect direction and updates on every last detail.

My daughter is Irish but has lived in the Alps and now Vancouver . There’s been constant snow and sub zero temperatures and she’s an hours commute to work. She hasn’t missed a day of work all winter . I know these countries are more prepared but it’s also their attitude. She is Irish, not Canadian but her attitude is the same as the Canadians .....take precautions, be prepared but just get on with it !!

Out now to clear the snow, feed the birds and prepare for Spring !

It’s nothing to do with attitude. Canadians need the infrastructure to be able to easily clear slow, Ireland only gets rare events and as such we don’t need or have the infrastructure to clear the high levels of snow accumulations.

fryup

its really a case of....damned if they do damned if they don't

personally speaking i think the 4pm curfew for yesterday was overkill, no need esp for the western half of the country

[Deleted User]

VonZan wrote: »

It’s nothing to do with attitude. Canadians need the infrastructure to be able to easily clear slow, Ireland only gets rare events and as such we don’t need or have the infrastructure to clear the high levels of snow accumulations.

It IS also about their attitude ! I understand they have a better infrastructure in Canada .....I’ve been there many times and I see that .
But they don’t overact with panic buying bread and milk when they hear it’s going to snow . They don’t think they won’t go to work or school........and see trains and all other public transport completely down, even in the cities like our brand new Luas ....in slush ! They don’t get government directives to stay in their houses because they won’t be able to see their hand .

They carry on with precautions and with preparation and with cop on .......as it’s just weather and Winter .

I know I’ll get slated for even posting this but I do believe people are not as tough or resilient as a generation ago . We all rely too heavily on waiting to be told what to do by someone else !

[Deleted User]

What a joke, red warning. The 1 metre expected in South Dublin turned out to be an inch as I said last night when it was rain and not snow, so dissapointed

GreeBo

fryup wrote: »

its really a case of....damned if they do damned if they don't

personally speaking i think the 4pm curfew for yesterday was overkill, no need esp for the western half of the country

Extreme weather can change very quickly, if they didnt do a blanket red warning and the storm shifted you could have had thousands of people stranded in the midlands.

If you have ever been stranded in snow for a few hours you know its something you want to avoid. There would be loss of life if infirm people were caught out like that.

[Deleted User]

CelticRambler wrote: »

Tell that to the lad in Cork who fell and broke his neck yesterday before the 4pm curfew ...

My best friend in Ireland (known him since primary school) is one of the worst drivers I know and he's (still) going on about how this has all been hyped up. If his employer hadn't shut the place down, I'm sure he'd be another one of those determined to go out for no good reason other than pure stubbornness to prove the authorities wrong, and ended up stuck in a ditch or wrapped around a bollard.

I'm no fan of the Nanny State, but there seems to be an increasing amount of stupidity on show in recent years when it comes to weather.

Tbf to the poor lad, that's Darwin stuff. Dad will I get up on this icy wall, yeah go ahead son.

Whatever warning you put in place won't stop people like that from doing stupid things and no a red warning wasn't remotely warranted

LeinsterDub

Deleted User wrote: »

It IS also about their attitude ! I understand they have a better infrastructure in Canada .....I’ve been there many times and I see that .
But they don’t overact with panic buying bread and milk when they hear it’s going to snow . They don’t think they won’t go to work or school........and see trains and all other public transport completely down, even in the cities like our brand new Luas ....in slush ! They don’t get government directives to stay in their houses because they won’t be able to see their hand .

They carry on with precautions and with preparation and with cop on .......as it’s just weather and Winter .

I know I’ll get slated for even posting this but I do believe people are not as tough or resilient as a generation ago . We all rely too heavily on waiting to be told what to do by someone else !

There attitude to a common and regular occurrence. If people aren't as tough as the before it makes all the warnings more valid?

facehugger99

Deleted User wrote: »

I know I’ll get slated for even posting this but I do believe people are not as tough or resilient as a generation ago . We all rely too heavily on waiting to be told what to do by someone else !

That's without question.

The country has become infantilised. The politicians, met eireann and the media all playing along.

It's downright embarrassing.

Social media is full of nervous ninnies trying to one up each other. Panic buying in the supermarkets, schools in the vast untouched swades of the country shut down, bus drivers, who are being paid a fortune from the public purse, abandoning their posts and fleeing to their homes at the first sign of a few snowflakes.

God help us if there's a real emergency someday because I have no confidence in us being able to manage our way through it.

No doubt I'll be shouted down for this though.

Christy42

[Deleted User] wrote: »

It IS also about their attitude ! I understand they have a better infrastructure in Canada .....I’ve been there many times and I see that .
But they don’t overact with panic buying bread and milk when they hear it’s going to snow . They don’t think they won’t go to work or school........and see trains and all other public transport completely down, even in the cities like our brand new Luas ....in slush ! They don’t get government directives to stay in their houses because they won’t be able to see their hand .

They carry on with precautions and with preparation and with cop on .......as it’s just weather and Winter .

I know I’ll get slated for even posting this but I do believe people are not as tough or resilient as a generation ago . We all rely too heavily on waiting to be told what to do by someone else !

They have that attitude because they have the infrastructure. If people knew the shop would definitely be open and have bread no one would have stocked up as much. Here people took the right option. Buy enough for a few days just in case. Seems sensible enough to me. In Canada it is irrelevant as the shop will open anyway and the road open. I guarantee that if you could guarantee safe passage to the shop and that it would be open people would not bother stocking up here. They have that attitude because they now they have the infrastructure.

As for needing someone to tell me what to do? Not really. I would not he leaving my apartment with or without the red warning. I can see the conditions where I am are unsafe. I am not going to go against sensible advice purely to spite the person giving it.

Yeah Drogheda may have gotten away with it but there was no way to tell that before last night. There are clearly areas that deserved the red warning nearby (relative to the size and movements of a weather system) it was the right call. People need to be able to plan ahead and a call had to be made - plan for the worst and hope for the best. Anything else would have been stupid and could have left plenty attempting journeys when it was unsafe.

weisses

pistolpetes11 wrote: »

Valid point being made there on prime time ,

Guy from the council saying schools being out has saved so much Salt / Grit

Strange ...traffic has a big positive influence on the working of grit/salt ... plus the proper way is to put as much grit on the roads before the event ... So I dont know where the potential saving is coming from

Discodog

iguana wrote: »

No I'm not. Your entire posts were about how you lost money because you couldn't work as your children were home. You don't need to use the word childcare to be very obviously talking about childcare.

Yes, in hindsight, there was no need for the schools to be closed. But weather forecasters don't have the benefit in hindsight. All they can do is tell us what is most likely to happen based on imperfect models of extremely unpredictable forces of nature. Late yesterday it looked like there was a chance the storm would arrive early. If it had, pupils and staff would not have been able to get home, possibly for several days in some areas. As we now know, it's coming later. But that couldn't have been known yesterday, we just don't have that type of forecasting ability.

All Met Eireann and the government can do is assess the risk and take action based on the severity of what there is a chance may happen. Personally I'm very glad that they are leaning towards erring on the side of caution. I live in a country that's prefers to protect our children from potential risk. Just think about that, your government has chosen to value your children more than the economy! That's worth so, so, so much more than money.

Not in Galway & the northern half of the Country. It was never forecast to arrive before 10pm. I went to work because I knew the forecast was accurate.

You would of hated life when I was a child & happily walked though two feet of snow to school.

GreeBo

weisses wrote: »

Strange ...traffic has a big positive influence on the working of grit/salt ... plus the proper way is to put as much grit on the roads before the event ... So I dont know where the potential saving is coming from

If the schools etc are closed they dont need to salt/grit those roads.

weisses

Mountainsandh wrote: »

Big freaking deal.
While you weren't making money others weren't making money either.
It sounds dangerously like what you are saying is that, because the state of the economy and possible loss in profits matter so much to you, it would have been ok to lose a few lives on the roads somewhere in Ireland in this event.

Every time we get an Red warning in Kerry ME should just include Dublin as well .... Just to be safe you know

weisses

GreeBo wrote: »

If the schools etc are closed they dont need to salt/grit those roads.

Sounds like a typical "Irish" solution ?

Code red to safe a few bob on possible grit :rolleyes:

[Deleted User]

LeinsterDub wrote: »

There attitude to a common and regular occurrence. If people aren't as tough as the before it makes all the warnings more valid?

No ......it just makes people more and more dependent on Nanny State ,Social Media, Government, Media outlets for how to get up our of bed and live their lives !

Maybe this is the generation that had been created by an over reliance on social media ?? And it’s probably an argument for another day , but if you keep spoon feeding people they will never stand on their own two feet and become independent adults able to think for themselves . I think it’s already too late for many people . (And apologies for going off topic

)

Graham

I really don't follow the logic of many of the posts on this thread.

How would breakfast discussion look for some of the posters here.

Finish up your chocco-bix Johnny & Mary and grab your schoolbags, there's only a 50% chance of life threatening weather conditions so we thought we'd chance sending you to school today. Off you go now.

Oneiric 3

Deleted User wrote: »

No ......it just makes people more and more dependent on Nanny State ,Social Media, Government, Media outlets for how to get up our of bed and live their lives !

Maybe this is the generation that had been created by an over reliance on social media ?? And it’s probably an argument for another day , but if you keep spoon feeding people they will never stand on their own two feet and become independent adults able to think for themselves . I think it’s already too late for many people . (And apologies for going off topic )

Much truth in this Maggie. Not what many want to hear, but what many need to hear anyway.

LeinsterDub

Deleted User wrote: »

No ......it just makes people more and more dependent on Nanny State ,Social Media, Government, Media outlets for how to get up our of bed and live their lives !

Maybe this is the generation that had been created by an over reliance on social media ?? And it’s probably an argument for another day , but if you keep spoon feeding people they will never stand on their own two feet and become independent adults able to think for themselves . I think it’s already too late for many people . (And apologies for going off topic )

Or maybe this generation has has the highest life expectancy partially because exactly because we are safer than ever before. Road deaths , work places deaths, accidents in the home etc , etc all down

A Rogue Hobo

Deleted User wrote: »

It IS also about their attitude ! I understand they have a better infrastructure in Canada .....I’ve been there many times and I see that .

But they don’t overact with panic buying bread and milk when they hear it’s going to snow . They don’t think they won’t go to work or school........and see trains and all other public transport completely down, even in the cities like our brand new Luas ....in slush ! They don’t get government directives to stay in their houses because they won’t be able to see their hand .

They carry on with precautions and with preparation and with cop on .......as it’s just weather and Winter .

You've literally answered your own questions and complaints in the second sentence of your spiel though. The reason why in places like Canada and Germany they can still go to the shops and work and pretty much carry on is BECAUSE they have better infrastructure. Because they know its most likely going to consistently snow for certain periods of every year, they can prepare for it.

They can dedicate millions in resources for preparing for these conditions because they are REGULAR conditions. If you've been there as often as you claim you would also understand that aspect. They don't just get snow and think "No worries, we'll carry on, unlike those wusses in Ireland" that's not how it works. They prepare for it, and prepare for it more effectively and efficiently than we do because again...these are regular yearly occurances in those climates...roads are plowed with much better machinery and increased numbers, winter tires are placed on cars and people travel with shovels and buckets in their cars. We can't really achieve all of those things, because this is not a regular occurrence in our country. The alternative is to waste millions and millions of euro of our budget every year on preparing for this weather when it'll only once in a blue moon which isn't advisable for obvious reasons.

To be fair the media didn't really over hype it, people overhyped it. The media didn't tell people to buy 8 pans of bread, 10 bags of carrots and 14 litres of milk two days before a snow storm hit that was people just going insane. Its been a non stop blizzard where I am for about 30 hours now, wind is still howling down. Can't even distinguish where the roads and paths are now that's how much snow has fallen. 2010 carried its own issues because of freezing...snow wasn't so much the issue. The issue was that the snow would start thawing but then temperatures would drop overnight and freeze it all over again making it incredibly dangerous. Bear in mind, this is only the 3rd day and there's about 3 feet of snow out there to clear. If temperatures drop over the next few days itll probably be midweek next week before full services are resumed.

I don't get the complaining and illogicial ranting on here. The majority of us got two or three extra days off work (the thing you were probably complaining about having to go to before this hit) and you get to spend it with friends and family and have a few drinks and a bit of fun in the snow. Just embrace it and enjoy it for what it is!

facehugger99

Graham wrote: »

Finish up your chocco-bix Johnny & Mary and grab your schoolbags, there's only a 50% chance of life threatening weather conditions

The kind of hyperbolic comments that rather prove my point.

GreeBo

weisses wrote: »

Sounds like a typical "Irish" solution ?

Code red to safe a few bob on possible grit :rolleyes:

More like its a wasted effort and waste of resources to keep them open if only a couple of kids are going to be able to get there anyway.