No thanks...you can keep your hurricanes!
We've just had ex-hurricane Ophelia "breeze" through...
Nationwide Red Alert - 150mph winds, 3 dead, roofs peeled off stadiums and houses and garden sheds flying through the air. Lots of building damage around the country but no homes lost that I'm aware of. Coastal flooding, trees down and roads and motorways blocked. Hundreds of thousands without power and other services. Our power has been out all day but just restored now (midnight), thankfully. Our little country, island even, is in shut down. Airports closed, national transport shut down, no schools open today or tomorrow for the entire country. Some businesses will open tomorrow but lots of cleaning up to do. I'll be in at 6am to power up the plant again and get it ready for 8am production, hopefully.
Still very strong gales this evening but it's just the tail of it as it heads north-east. Rainfall was persistent but no real flooding inland to talk of. Fair bit of debree flung about the place to clean up. The tall trees at the end of our back yard held up well considering they were bent sideways most of the day, towards the house. We have mainly deciduous broadleaf trees here where their leaves face the wind and the tree trunks do not bend so easily in the wind. Unlike palm trees, for instance. It's always interesting to see how newer more modern buildings fair in such conditions in comparison to older buildings and structures - not so well it would appear? Lots of fancy new cladding easily torn off shiny new supermarkets and the like.
But thank God that is over and we've come through relatively unscathed.
Now some of you might think "Pfff, that's a walk in the park!". But we just do not get this level of weather event here. Maybe once every 50 years. We're not used to it or prepared for it. The weather in Ireland is inclement, at best, but I always say I'd take it any day over the penalty incrued for having a tropical climate.
I have always had a healthy dose of respect and sympathy for what must, I'm sure, be life changing and catastrophic events for you folks during tropical cyclone/hurricane season. But today has elevated that level of appreciation to a new level. Very scary and panic inducing and I am not one that panics too easily.
So many laughed off the warnings here in typical Irish "Sure, it'll be grand" fashion - to their detriment. Two of the fatalities were separate people driving unnecessarily where a tree fell on their car. We were all warned to stay in doors. I drove home from the plant at midday when it was only starting up and there were lots of branches down already. One other fatality was a man in his early thirties clearing a felled tree with a chainsaw when another tree fell on him. Why clear it in the middle of the storm? No one was going anywhere, or should have been. Very unfortunate and unnecessary deaths. But aren't they often?
Global warming "experts" are suggesting that this phenomenon, of storms retaining there cyclonic structure and power as they drift east across the Atlantic towards Europe, will become more frequent. I do hope they are incorrect, but it's hard to ignore certain facts which do facilitate this occuring more frequently in the future. For instance, notably warmer Atlantic sea temperatures and sea air which have also been detected more easterly than before. This has resulted in a more easterly centric origin for many of these tropical cyclones. Coupled also with the detection of less wind shear they say that these factors primarly aided Ophelia in maintaining hurricane strength winds so far east. Historically these hurricane strength winds would normally have abated long before they would hit more easterly European shores. I can see merit in their reasoning but one storm is only one statistical data point. If we can say it's been roughly 50 years since the last major event here then let's see how long before the next. I hope, as timid as our little whirlwind might sound to a more seasoned and scarred hurricane victim, that I don't see another similar event in my lifetime.
Yes, you can most definitely keep your hurricanes! The Atlantic, that is. I wouldn't wish these oceanic beasts upon anyone!
Goodbye Ophelia...
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and indued
Unto that element: but long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death. - Hamlet
Respectfully relieved,
George