In the Dark

I have seen Red Weather Alerts from Met Éireann before, but never one that covered the whole country! This unprecedented situation is down to Storm Éowyn. This is the map for tomorrow morning, 24th January:

I’ve been following the predictions of the HARMONIE model for Storm Éowyn as they get updated. This storm is an absolutely monster! The latest model maps look like this:

Note the wind speeds, well over 200 km/h in the white areas; these are gusts, not steady average speeds, but could be very damaging. As usual the West coast will bear the brunt. Where I am, in County Kildare, is much more sheltered, but even here gusts are forecast to exceed 100 km/h. The one thing to be optmistic about is that in any location its duration will be relatively short. The Red Alerts start about 2am on the West coast, but in Kildare the maximum danger is between 6am and 11am. The predicted impacts are:

• Danger to life
• Extremely dangerous travelling conditions
• Unsafe working conditions
• Disruption and cancellations to transport
• Many fallen trees
• Significant and widespread power outages
• Impacts to communications networks
• Cancellation of event
• Structural damage
• Wave overtopping
• Coastal flooding in low-lying and exposed areas

(The last two aren’t relevant for Kildare, which is inland. At least I hope “waves overtopping” isn’t relevant 30km from the sea!)

During the red alerts there will be no public transport, and many offices etc will be closed until the Red Alert is over. There will be no postal deliveries anywhere tomorrow either.

Maynooth University Campus is understandably closed tomorrow too. Fortunately the exam period is over and teaching does not resume until the start of February, so this won’t cause too much disruption to academic life. I’ll be working on home. Ireland’s electricity system is fragile at the best of times, however, so there is a significant risk of power cuts and interruptions to internet access. If I don’t blog tomorrow, you will know why! I have plenty of work that I can do without the internet, though.

I have a ticket for a concert at the National Concert Hall tomorrow evening. I usually travel by train into Dublin for such things. Public transport should have resumed by the time I would travel, but I’ll keep an eye on things. Fallen trees are a real hazard around here, and could affect both road and rail transport. If there is continued disruption, I’ll stay at home. If it’s very bad, of course, the event might be cancelled anyway.

My kitchen is entirely electric so in case of power cuts I’ll do a bit of shopping to make sure I have enough food for tomorrow that can be eaten cold. It is raining at the moment but when there’s a gap I’ll move all moveable objects in my garden into the shed, including the wheelie bins, in case they blow away. I have a feeling there’ll be quite a few twigs and branches to clear up on Saturday!

This entry was posted on January 23, 2025 at 12:38 pm and is filed under Biographical, Maynooth. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.