nav[aria-label="Primary Navigation"] { padding: 0; & ul { list-style: none; width: 100%; display: flex; flex-direction: row; justify-content: start; align-items: start; gap: 30px; padding: 0; & li { margin: 0; } & ul li { list-style: none; } } }

Child Item

Severe Thunderstorm July 25th/26th 1985

Danno

Looking at the weather today, I expected a re-run of that famous night in 1985 when Ireland was blitzed by lightning. It almost came off, as most of the Shannon region was hit today.

Anyone with memories of that famous night? I would love to hear them! Please post!

Find more posts tagged with

Quick Links

Comments

maquiladora

DOCARCH wrote: »

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVf4_WglzWA

Cheesy! :P But appropriate for the year!

Like shedweller, I too now very much regret cowering under the sheets/blankets. I was 12 at the time and I don't think I was ever so scared in my life! The constant lightning and thunder was simply unreal.

I was too young to be frightened! I think I was just amazed and entertained by the constant light in the sky, I don't remember the thunder at all.

keith16

dopolahpec wrote: »

I was 6 during that storm and my neighbour's house caught fire *sitting room anyway* after a lightning strike. I also saw purplish/pink ball lightning hovering mid-air (seemingly) and also rolling about on heaped topsoil behind our house - quite slowly too.

My father, mother, sister and neighbours experienced it also. None of us ever saw anything like it before or since, to the extent I've questioned whether it even happened. But my family and neighbours assure me it did. For some reason it felt paranormal at the time. Like the regular thunderstorm was merely a cloak for something stranger. A sense that is not helped by never having experienced anything similar since

I was around 3 and I remember everything perfectly about that whole day and I feel the same. Incredible stuff.

shedweller

My dad was saying he was full sure the house was going to be burnt down. He was close to abandoning ship, although he didnt say he had a plan for how to cross the yard through the st elmos fire to get to a shed or the car. Not to mention the lightning arcing up and down the lane and yard along the water! WTF??!!
The more i write about it the more annoyed i get at myself for not looking out at it! Maybe next time eh?

Oneiric 3

29 years ago tonight. Would say the air mass over Ireland today is not too dissimilar to that which lay over us back on this evening in 1985; and like July 25 1985, we have a cold front moving in from the west. Only missing ingredient this time around is a volatile, moisture packed low moving up from Biscay.

Looking at reanalysis maps, would take a guess and say that the main frontal zone - embedded and pivoting around the Biscay low - lay in a SE-NW alignment over the south and west of the country. with the main thrust of storms occurring separately and away from this main zone (at least initially) and more as part of a possible embedded trough that may have developed that evening in the actual warm sector.

Would love to see some old frontal analysis maps from this night.

[Deleted User]

I was 5 then in 1985, I don't think I remember it.

I do remember bad storms in the years 86-89

I think one year maybe 1987, there was bad thunder and lightning a few days in a row and I remember one morning it got so dark that the street lights came on.

I remember the neighbours talking about seeing lightning hovering or bouncing off the ground and the smell after ?

I used to be really scared of it, I do remember some pretty intense storms, from about 1986-89, I've never seen the likes since.

People get excited about thunder here now today, but it's nothing like I remember back then.

I don't consider a Thunderstorm to be one flash and bang every 3-5 mins.

I remember the dark orange red glow in the sky in the south, south east, it would be there all afternoon and I'd hear the Thunder from about 5pm and it would be over us about midnight and was very intense until 4-5am or so. The rain was incredible and hailstones, again the likes I've never experienced since. I remember lots of crop damage those times too.

I think those were the days Met Eireann used to use a stick and used to point to charts on a wall ? or am I imagining it ? anyway all I remember was hearing the Bay of Biscay, Bay of Biscay and I knew it was going to be really bad.

These days storms that originate in the Bay of Biscay move over France all the time and sometimes the U.K.

I don't know if we'll ever see the likes of it again, certainly hasn't been anything like it in this part of the Island since then.

acequion

That summer will always be so vivid in my mind with my father,a very young man, dying of cancer.But apart from that and constant grey skies,my most vivid recollections from that July, are of Live Aid,moving statues and Kerry babies.Does anyone know if that thunderstorm hit Kerry?

degrassinoel

I remember that night really well, i would have been nine, and it was the loudest thing i've ever heard, also the greatest show of nature's fury i've ever witnessed.

Didnt sleep a wink, couldn't with the constant booms and cracks and low deafening rumbles. First and only time I've ever seen what i believe to be ball lightning - although it wasn't ball shaped, more like a longer lasting streak of pure luminous blue - lasted about 5 or six seconds before it fizzled out, at least that's how i remember it anyway. I love thunder and lightning storms, but i'm not sure i'd like to experience one like '85 again, as terrifying as it was awesome at that age

Harps

Does anyone know of a more recent example of what these storms would have been like? Would they be equivalent to what we see in northern France/Germany during Spanish Plume events?

Just trying to get an idea of the intensity of it as half the country seems to remember it and it's unusual to have one event stick out so much

Kalimah

I just reported a post there a minute ago. Sorry - this phone is desperately sensitive.

I was posting about the storm of June 85. My mother was in hospital dying of cancer and I remember going in to see her the next day asking had she heard much of it. We lived out near the mountains and the thunder and lightning was incredible. I spent most of the night under the stairs terrified.

PukkaStukka

Harps wrote: »

Does anyone know of a more recent example of what these storms would have been like? Would they be equivalent to what we see in northern France/Germany during Spanish Plume events?

Just trying to get an idea of the intensity of it as half the country seems to remember it and it's unusual to have one event stick out so much

I've experienced continental storms in France, Germany, Italy and Spain, and that storm in '85 is by far the spectacular and violent I've ever experienced. Believe me, those big bangers on the continent didn't go anywhere near what went off here.

I'd go as far as to say that '85 was a display of Meteorological savegery the likes of which we we'll never see in this country again.

Harps

When I say continental storms I mean proper supercell/MCS storms which are just about as severe as you can get in Europe

Something like this..

[Deleted User]

Isn't it true lightning doesn't strike the ground but flows from ground up to cloud ?

torrentum

Harps wrote: »

When I say continental storms I mean proper supercell/MCS storms which are just about as severe as you can get in Europe

Something like this..

That video is almost exactly as I remember it. Amazing. Terrifying.

torrentum

Would you believe, I think of that storm every July without fail. I hope I witness it again sometime. But to be honest, I would be nervous of the extreme intensity of light and sound.

leahyl

My mum speaks about this all the time - I had only just been born in the May and my brother was only 4 and she remembers sitting in the downstairs bedroom, on the bed, looking out at the torrential rain flowing down the hill of our estate, and the phone was hopping off the hook because of the lightning......

findra

Just googled 'youghal thunderstorm 1985' to see if I was imagining who bad it was and came onto this site. I was 8 at the time. It was a very heavy, muggy day and we were up from a friends holiday home in youghal as my brother had to see an eye doctor. We went back to youghal in the evening and we were in a house overlooking the big river/estuary coming into youghal. At around 6.30 it started crackling and there were forks regularly appearing over the river. It just kept going and going all night. I remember going into bed with my brother and dad awake the whole night. (the parents divided up the kids with each of them as it was that bad and my mothers snoring along with the thunder was scaring the **** out of me) One thing I remember was going out to the toilet and every few seconds there was a bright flash and accompanying thunder. It was constant like that for hours. Then later in the night, a blinding flash even though I had my eyes closed and was under the covers followed by the largest bang I ever heard. I remember it as the building shaking! Crazy night!

pharmaton

I remember this well too, I think anyone young enough to remember this as part of their childhood would prob have a bit of fear of thunderstorms given the intensity of it. My father had left on a working trip to the states the previous evening and it was the first time I had ever been away from him, he was trying to contact us when he landed but we couldn't answer the phone and it was two days before he was able to communicate with us. It just sounded like the sky was being ripped in two with every strike and it went on non stop for what seemed like days. It prob not unreasonable that I would associate storms with all those feelings from back then. Terrifying stuff.

Lucy B

My mom speaks of this storm from time to time. I was 3 so don't remember it. Her and my dad just sat there all day watching it from the bedroom window. She said she really was scared as the lightning struck down into the field in front of our house numerous times.

Eugbug

This is a report by Met Eireann on the event, and it was on the night of the 25th of July 1985, extending into the 26th.
From what I can remember, the lightning frequency was every couple of seconds, like those dramatic storms you see in films. In Naas, lots of shops were flooded and loads of phone lines were knocked out. Crops were also flattened by the hailstones. I took this (crappy quality) photo of lightning near a community TV aerial about a hundred metres away from the back of my house. Unfortunately all the photos I took were over exposed and whenever there's a storm at night now, I'm always trying to get a decent photograph.

http://www.met.ie/climate-ireland/weather-events/July1985_Thunderstorm.PDF

uploading pictures

Danno

Great snap - oh, if only we had the phones with cameras back then like we do today, we'd have some videos/pics to show!

The fork lightning in that pic is awesome and to remember it flashing down every couple of seconds in every direction was awesome to watch. Maybe some day we'll get another show like it.

[Deleted User]

We had a good few bad storms between 85-90, 85 was probably the worst alright but definitely there were some fantastic storms and certainly some crop flattening hail.

I remember the older folk saying they were saying prayers that night in 85 it was that bad and a few storms after, my Grandmother included. And not only that they used to go around covering the mirrors with sheets ?

I don't know why the atmosphere has changed so much in the last 30 odd years, I definitely think the climate has cooled and got cloudier. I can remember summer thunder showers and then the sun would come out after and you'd see the steam rise off the roads and buildings like a big fog and the humidity would be dreadful.

Our summers have definitely got a lot crappier.

Eugbug

Danno wrote: »

... Maybe some day we'll get another show like it.

Yeah, I live in hope:) They got some good ones in the midlands in the last few weeks - They always seem to happen somewhere else though!

[Deleted User]

I'm hoping for a few good ones when I go to Germany in August but sadly so far every time I go there it's either roasting and dry , Dull and wet or the very odd rumble in the distance.

weisses

The weather is getting more severe on the continent the last couple of years (summers).

the 85 event is a regular occurrence over there

Eugbug

Took this pic one evening in 2003. These are called mammatus clouds and this was the actual colour of the sky. It was an anti-climax though and nothing happened.

image sharing

Padster90s

Has anyone recollections of a severe thunderstorms in September 2005 or 2006? I was at my parents in N'East Galway. Can't remember the the year but it was the worst storm I remember. It was just like strobe lights were pointed at all the windows the lightening was so bad.

PukkaStukka

RTE Archives have added their report on this hallowed nights events. A shame it doesn't do the night the justice it deserves!!

http://www.rte.ie/archives/collections/news/21200391-freak-storm-causes-damage

PukkaStukka

RTE archives have added their coverage of the June 1986 thunderstorm

http://www.rte.ie/archives/collections/news/21219093-thunder-and-lightning-storm-damage/

acequion

Deleted User wrote: »

We had a good few bad storms between 85-90, 85 was probably the worst alright but definitely there were some fantastic storms and certainly some crop flattening hail.

I remember the older folk saying they were saying prayers that night in 85 it was that bad and a few storms after, my Grandmother included. And not only that they used to go around covering the mirrors with sheets ?

I don't know why the atmosphere has changed so much in the last 30 odd years, I definitely think the climate has cooled and got cloudier. I can remember summer thunder showers and then the sun would come out after and you'd see the steam rise off the roads and buildings like a big fog and the humidity would be dreadful.

Our summers have definitely got a lot crappier.

I would agree, though that summer 1985 was about as crappy as you'll ever get. I distinctly remember it as my late father was dying that summer and the weather was so bad he could never be taken outside.

Kermit.de.frog

Elmer Blooker wrote: »

I can remember another brilliant storm on August 25th 2000 though nowhere near as violent as 1985 it was a fantastic electrical display.

I remember this as a child living near the east coast. Not much rain with it though. The lightning was mainly out over the Irish sea.