Country Living with Francis Farragher

For nearly all of us it will go down as the long weekend that never seemed to end as Storm Éowyn certainly lived up to expectations hurtling wind speeds that many had never experienced before and which took some people back to the Saturday of September 16th, 1961, when Hurricane Debbie wreaked such havoc across the land.

Galway had the somewhat dubious distinction of setting a new wind speed record for Ireland of 99 knots [114mph or 183.5km/h] at the Met Éireann weather station at Mace Head in South-West Conamara beating the previous ‘best’ at Malin Head, Donegal, during Debbie nearly 64-years ago.

We really did take some battering here in the West during the early hours of Friday morning, January 24, and there was a real eerie feel to the storm due to the range of sound effects that accompanied Éowyn, the scariest of which was a high-pitched whine which seemed to introduce the strongest of the gales. By now, we all know, that Éowyn was the name of a character from JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, a tough noblewoman, and by now too we’re all able to give her the correct pronunciation, Ay-Oh-Win.

There are lessons though to be learned from the trivial to the deadly serious in the wake of the damage, discomfort and danger that Éowyn brought to our land but in fairness to Met Éireann, the warnings were presented early and clearly that we were going to be confronted by a violent weather episode last Thursday night and into Friday morning.

Experienced meteorologists and weather organisations have described the storm as ‘extraordinary and explosive’ with a record low-pressure reading of 939 millibars at the centre or Éowyn, as compared to 961.4 during the peak of Hurricane Debbie. The sudden dip in pressure of 52 millibars in 24-hours was another classic sign for a weather bomb scenario. So, why was the storm that severe?

Éowyn started as a pretty much run-of-the-mill low-pressure weather system off the east coast of the United States on the Tuesday and Wednesday of last week, January 21 and 22, before our ‘old friend’ the jet stream, took control of proceedings. Our jet stream which blows from west to east across the Atlantic, roughly six miles above the earth’s surface, aligned up pretty much perfectly with Storm Éowyn from Thursday on. The jet was also stronger [close to 300mph] and straighter than normal as well as being perfectly aimed for a strike on Ireland. It was a lethal combination.

Pictured: NO PRISONERS TAKEN: A large tree flattened near Galway City on the Knocknacarra Road show the power Storm Éowyn and the dangers that roadside trees pose.    PHOTO: JOE O’SHAUGHNESSY.