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

Beats me. I don't work for the ESB. My brother has been told his fault will be prioritized because the school is impacted but if they could indicate where the priority lies, it could help those of us without power to make informed decisions. I can afford a couple of nights in a hotel but I can't swing 8 nights so I would need to be smart about it. Probably stay home for the weekend when rates are highest but if I book for the rest of this week and power comes back, I won't be able to cancel without incurring at least some of the cost. I heard from the receptionist at a nearby hotel that demand is already high due to people resorting to hotels.

ive not scrolled through every page here, but there seems to be a vast contrast of ppl's experience from what i can see, re the severity of the storm. Some ppl in Dublin say they felt nothing, i thought our windows were going to go, they were bellowing that much, never ever seen that before. It was really bad from around 0830 - 1130am Friday. And a few ppl i know down south east said it wasnt too bad for them?

a couple of ppl through work from Clare to Galway, got hammered. Tiles off rooves, gardens / fences thrashed etc, pretty badly, with power out for a couple of days, no water, or phone signal. But not as bad as some others with major structural damage to their homes / properties. i dont know what sort of beefing up you can do, but id be aware of whats swaying around me for a start.

rural areas are particularly vulnerable, and i think the state should step in to see what can be learned further from this. As it will no doubt happen again. I not saying free money all round, we have enough of this carry on already, but the state has an obligation to rural areas irrespective of population density / their geographical location to assist more - how im not sure, burying power lines could be a start if possible ? Costly i know. And emergency water tankers on standby from councils in local areas - im not sure if they had deployed any last week / weekend to any areas ?

If i was in rural ireland or living on the south and west coasts , id be buying a decent generator ( many have these already) have a large water butt to store rain water to flush waste and spare camping gas appliances for cooking. it will be a damn sight better than having nothing for a few days. Its a new reality i think. if it were worse and to last longer you'd wonder what state we would be in if it had of tracked more intensely through the country at a slower pace.

and you have to commend the emergency crews for all their hard work as usual.

We certainty will.

I’ve also/continue to suffer brief power outages. Easily over 30 a year. Where power goes off for a second or 2 or longer. Some days can happen 3 or 4 times. They don’t know what causes it. Can damage expensive equipment. They need to clear more branches near the line. This coming out every 4 or 5 years trimming the same branches is a waste of time. Just cut the tree and get it over with.

To be fair, it was an unprecedented event too. I am 50+ and I have never seen the likes of it. Not even close and I love a good storm. The damage done is hard to describe.

The Mace Head record for wind gusts was 156 km/h. This storm hit 183 km/h before the station went dead. As Sryan predicted, the old record was smashed.

Esb are torturing Spiddal. They said power would be on yesterday, then changed it to today. Now saying 5th of Feb.

No comparison. Darragh was a big storm here but utterly tame in comparison to Eowyn. I think Darraghs highest wind gust was 141k, at Mace Head. Try adding another 42k.

I drove 5 miles on Friday and saw 7 poles down. On the ground. That's unprecedented. I drove about 10 miles a different direction on Saturday and saw 5 more poles down. In all previous storms, you might see a pole or two down.

As for trees down, this was off the scale. I had 3 old trees down on my 1 acre site alone. 2 more very damaged, probably will die. We were many many hours clearing the trees to the nearest village. They are down everywhere you look. 100+ in my local golf course.

Not the first! If its any help, a few places that got the dreaded Feb 5th estimate, already got power back.

sorry I beg to differ to some extent yes people are responsible for their trees but if the ESB have placed a cable running under or through someone's tree the ESB should be making sure the tree/cable are safe by topping the tree to a level beneath the cable. Currently they just bore a hole 3 meters around the cable which makes the trees structure very unreliable and is bound to have complications as the tree grows or rots. The ESB is also already been paid handsomely by the the owner of the tree for electricity and the ESB have the expertise for tree cutting. IMO the ESB need to get up off their overpaid holes and go on a serious drive to cut back trees that have their cables near them before the next storm.

I did drive past split pole yesterday that have a decent core about 4 inches across but the rest was pure rotten.

Power gone again in our part of the world outside Westport.

I'd guess - perhaps incorrectly - that it's a case of knocking ours out while they resolve a problem or get another line on?

Can't complain though as we got ours back on Friday evening while the vast majority still haven't.

Only just got power back since 4.30am friday, we have had no water, network signal since Friday. there was no signal around large areas around Tuam. Had to drive to 5k to Tuam to get a signal. No network signal from Tuam to Claremorris up to this morning. There was 22 trees down on a 5k stretch from home to Tuam alone. This the worst storm I've experienced since xmas eve 1997. Extensive damage down around my area, so many roofs damaged or in some cases blown off. So many roof tiles on the streets of Tuam friday morning. Some trees were just snapped and others uprooted. I have pictures but wont get a chance to upload for a day or 2.I haven't had a chance to read back through the thread so don't know if my experience matches what others did. Just said id report what I experienced.

"If not higher"?

Mace head just recorded the strongest ever gust of wind in Ireland (183 km/h). It broke Debbie's record from 1961.

I believe it also broke the sustained winds record in Ireland (135 km/h I think).

No other storms were higher since records began.

There are a couple of points to get through to people though:

1) Ireland has EXTREMELY low density scatter populations due to decades of bad planning - that is a huge part of why utilities are so hard to restore quickly - there are thousands of faults in random locations

2) We've effectively been through an almost hurricane-like storm. We don't seem to like using terms like 'natural disaster' as those are something that we seem to think only happens somewhere else and sound too high drama. This is literally a natural disaster level event. We are underplaying it as a bit of a breeze in the way it's being discussed. In some cases, people are going to be without electricity for a prolonged time and we need to be doing more to ensure they're OK - warm, have access to food and water.

I'm not getting the sense that the government is reacting in a big enough way and the communication needs to improve urgently, particularly some kind of a centre getting info out from the ESB and Irish Water.