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

What posters on this thread in the South and East, and the national media seem to be missing, is that this storm was absolute carnage across most of Clare and Connacht.

And they are missing that mainly because we have no comms to get the word out.

Phone networks, Internet and power are all out across most of the province all day.

Easily the worst storm in living memory in South Ros, and possibly since 1839.

Unprecedented amount of trees uprooted and roofs damaged. It will be several days before the full extent of damage to property is assessed, with many roads still inaccessible.

I don't scare easily but 5-6am this morning was simply terrifying!

Few pictures from my own house (Donegal):

And just down the road, a big one:

Incredibly the only roof damage was a small corner tile broken.

Power is off since about half 10. I've got enough battery power left to get me to maybe 10am so it might be a squeeze unless we get some sunlight tomorrow fairly early.

I got national news radio access for 90 minutes this afternoon. Storm coverage focused on transport service updates in the Dublin area, the South and South East, an ice rink in Dublin, for some bizarre reason, and the only mention of Connacht was a very brief reference to damage to the Dome in Mayo. Very much sounded like they hadn't a clue of the extent of the damage in Galway and surrounding counties.

Essential worker .

And @DellyBelly you might want to retract that following comment so won't quote it .

Donegal Red warning did not come into force until 6 am and that accident happened at 5.30 am .

Never mind that somebody lost their life .

I would if connectivity allowed me load more than 1 page of this thread!!. So going mostly off the radio news reports. The extent of the damage in the west will come out over the next few days.

x.

I was driving last night too (essential worker).

Around 10pm the rain was torrential with moderately strong gusts. There was lots of traffic on the roads including some eejits on e-scooters. It seemed like everyone was making a mad dash home, more traffic than usual at that hour. But it didn't feel any more unsafe than a yellow warning.

Around midnight the place became a ghost town bar a couple of odd balls power walking through the storm. Still felt ok to drive bar watching for hazards.

at 2-3am the wind was extreme, I wasn't driving at that hour thankfully. Went back out driving at 4am and the wind had died down substantially and it felt safe enough to drive tbh, I was just very wary of trees that could be falling. Thankfully I only came across 1 felled tree not on a road I was going on.

All wheelie bins were still standing. I saw a gutter that had come loose.

Drove home before 7am and it was honestly a comfortable drive home in my car. The South East really escaped the storm it seems. Darwin and Ophelia were magnitudes worse for the SE.

I listened to Radio 1 all day. It was report after report on how bad things are in Galway, including reports from RnaG staff who sounded traumatised. All day emphasising how we won't even know the extent of the damage in the West as so many are cut off. I think the focus has been nearly 100% on the seriousness of this storm and the impact on Galway and other Western counties.

Fair enough, but that was the opposite of what I heard on news radio reports. No mention of the west, with an unexplained focus on the (mostly unaffected) south and east. As other's have said it seemed like the Dublin red warning was an excuse for news staff to stay at home and almost all of what was on RTE at the time was Ray D'Arcy blathering about the weather not being too bad and some nonsense about carvery dinners 🙄

It must have been mentioned already that the 940mb atmospheric pressure at Belmullet is the 3rd lowest ever reported by any official Irish weather station. If I have te data correct only the 20 November 1838 Limerick 931.2 and the 26 January 1884 Markree Castle 936.6 are lower. I.e. it's the lowest in over 140 years. Interesting statistic saying something about the almost unprecedented ferocity of this storm for the West coast.

oh right well that’s good 😊

ESB saying some customers would be without power for an entire week - not just now but with every major storm, is indicative of the network being unreliable.

This isn't true as I know a few people in different parts of Sligo town and like me they had no power from 530am until 12.

Gable of our house got blown loose and bits of our tiles fell off and neighbours drainpipe blew off completely.

Several trees were felled around Sligo town and 100s in Sligo county.

I think max wind speed in Sligo was 135kph unconfirmed and near 145 at Sligo Airport.

Also the Cranmore area isn't always impacted during storms. We were during Darragh but previous to that we were fine most times.

AActually Windfinder confirms a gust of 84knots at Sligo Airport which is 155kph.

No.

It’s indicative as to how hard it is to supply electricity to certain areas of the country when the network is torn to shite as a result of a major storm.

Being in the same Parish means nothing, you have to be on the same electrical circuit,and yes, something was seriously wrong with this circuit. My power can be out and yet the town and house I can see from my kitchen window will have power. I understand how the number is hard to believe. When I say outages most of them would be just a few seconds which auto reset and come back on, leaving the oven clock needing to be reset and dropping internet connections, crashing 2 servers and a couple routers.

I knew the number was high but didn't have an actual figure until one time I was on the phone reporting a fault and the lady I was speaking to said something to the effect that yes, she could see I had had two earlier outages that day, I then asked if her system could tell her how many power interruptions I had had since the beginning of the year, and she replied 52. Since that was around August and since the same 2 or so brief power breaks per week continued, I am inferring the 60 and it was likely higher, but who's going to believe that when they can't believe 60?

I asked the lady if she could lodge a complaint and she said yes and did so. I got a call back from the area manager in Roscrea a month or two later and we had a conversation that was unsatisfactory. I later wrote and submitted a complaint. From the first complaint I think it was something like 2 years before some work was obviously done on the circuit and it has improved, with the multi times a week, brief disconnects being almost eliminated as of about 6-8 months ago I would estimate, but the overall fragility of the circuit has remained so within the last 3 months I've had at least 3 multi-hour outages, the one Yesterday being for 13 hours.