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

If you've got a proper passive house it doesn't need a chimney, in fact the existence of a chimney would seriously impact its effectiveness. The whole point is that it won't rapidly get cold and can continue to be comfortable in the absence setting fire to things and producing toxic smoke.

Common sense is not to double down on all the behaviours that cause climate change and extreme weather in the face of extreme weather. That's the opposite of common sense. The common sense approach would be to focus on more A rated housing with better insulation, and to invest more in solar panels backed up by EV batteries with V2L. Many people in more modern houses have been living comfortably through the power cuts thanks to these technologies.

Obviously it's not something everyone can do overnight but it's something that should be worked towards as a society, rather than regressing backwards to a state that's only going to result in more bigger storms.

The synoptic reminds me in a way of 3rd January 2012. NCEP reanalysis resolution is poor back then with a lack of data and a lot of interpolation to fill in the gaps but it's the best we have to go by besides old Met Office reports and maybe old newspapers but I currently don't have access to the archive. All the digitised data in the public domain for wind only goes back to 1940s and 1950s at earliest.

UK Met say in the daily weather reports that Malin Head and Belmullet had average wind speeds of force 7 and force 8 at 1800 from a WNW direction. The disaster is said to have happened at 2000. It blew over very quickly. Malin Head pressure was 997mb at 1800 on the 30th and back up to 1002mb by 0100 on the 31st. Some reports have expressed the wind was so sudden giving me the sense that maybe some kind of stingjet was involved but what Met Office say would make you think it was just a standard windy episode from an enhanced North Atlantic jet stream with low pressure systems to the north.

The rapid development of a depression southward of Iceland caused high winds and gales on various parts of our coasts and conditions remained rather rough on the 30th & 31st - Met Office on January 1925 report.

I'd kill for a few slabs of turf briquettes. Killing those off was yet another fu​ck you Ireland from Eamon gobshi​te Ryan.

'People might be reading too much into it': Eamon Ryan suggests peat briquettes won't be banned

The smoky fuel ban is due to come into being later this year.

Lying wan​ker.

In other news… Fibre connection was lost on Friday, reported it to some barely intelligible person in India. Enquired again to be told 8 days estimate to fix.

And anpost is down and out for the count also, I have several packages that are sitting around in Dublin instead of being sent to the local PO and being delivered.

"Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds"

Whoops, wrong country, my bad.

What will the total economic cost of this come to?

Won't be surprised if we see a few insurance companies going bust.

In West Cork we have had the power out three times in 24 hrs, luckily , just out for a few hours each time. The Government response has been less than pathetic, there should have been generators at the pumping stations, water tankers going around to towns, meals on wheels to the old folk. This is a real state of emergency.

We're used to power cuts, we were out for two weeks in 2010, we have two generators & a change over switch but I feel for elderly people.

The water service has been poor. Surely it is easier to send a truck with a generator to the pumping station than have water tankers driving around? In this day and age you could have battery trucks which could provide power for a period then swap it each day and take the battery off to be charged elsewhere.

Likewise there could have been a plan for hubs, like the GAA club on the news last night. If every district had a hub with a generator then people could go there and meals on wheels type services could originate there. These type of community organisations like the GAA will do what they can, but a plan would have been nice.

What kind of generator do you have? I have a generator but wasn't much good this time or the last time. The internet was down regardless of the power supply and the people who built the house opted for integrated kitchen appliances. I think we need a re-think on the layout of the kitchen in future. Luckily we have a wood burning stove in the living room. If we didn't, we would be in dire straits.

I know people are frustrated with ever changing power return times. The thing is though, as the network starts to get repaired, the number of known faults is growing not shrinking. An outage affecting 1,500 homes might turn out to have 5 or more sub faults. As of now there are over 2,000 known faults on the network. That's 2,000 locations where crews will need to assess and repair.

That happened in my father's house twice fixed 1 fault and bang went we were very lucky and back Saturday afternoon

one practical thing government could do is give tax relief or a grant towards generator purchase for homes

Min 4 to 6 kva units

About a grand a house,40 or 60 million euro’s plus a maintenance contract on them

Common sense like

I thought that stoves are not allowed to be put into new homes?

Nevermind the fact that all the insulation and air tightness and Mechanical Heat recovery ventilation in the world isn’t worth a shite if all that retained heat in the house gets sucked outside in a few seconds when someone opens the hall door on windy day.

When all this settles down, there needs to a serious examination of how the ESB management have failed to maintain their supply network properly. I spoke to one of the 'heroes' yesterday, one of the repair crews who carry out the repairs to faults on the line. He explained how the ESB want to maximise profits and have a totally inadequate maintenance budget. They don't what the expense of employing permanent and expensive crew. It is far cheaper for them to employ outside crews on a temporary basis to carry out repairs to lines after storms. He said that many of the recent faults occurred because of 'obvious' over-hanging trees, rotten poles etc; facts well known to management but ignored by them. The management are so adept at Public relations however. There's always a well-spoken representative to explain what the ESB are doing, with no mention of what they are not doing.

How about 150,000 of us descend on Leinster house with tin mugs and bowls and repetitively chant; "pleas sir, can we have some more" while holding them aloft for the foreign media to relay to the wider world. Embarrass them into acting and getting off their green electric everything high-horse.

MM sucking up to foreign entities instead of being here is inexcusable. Excuse my while I just pop out for a moment to suck up to some genocidal murderous shi​ts, they are a lot more important than you lot, after all.

So Dara Calleary plans to be on the ground today; 4 days after the storm. Only an imbecile or someone living in D4 would not comprehend how bad things are. This is the second time this lad is off to a shaky start as a minister. He wouldn't inspire optimism.

And of course Mehole has to be going abroad as we can't be seen to upset anyone in Europe