Code Red
The meeja here are working themselves up into a fierce frenzy altogether.
There is a bit of a wind coming so naturally the entire country is closing down. Schools are closed, airports are closed. Buses are only going to run when they feel like it [no change there, so?]. We are to nail everything to the ground and stay indoors. The army, the navy and the air force are on standby. The nation is huddled in a corner with its collective head between its collective knees kissing its collective arse goodbye.
Yes – Hurricane Ophelia has arrived.
I suppose there is a certain level of excitement. Normally we just hear about hurricanes over the other side of the pond, but at last we have one of our very own. The trouble is that because it’s the first we have experienced, the Powers that Be haven’t a clue what to expect. Even the weather forecasters admitted that. They just don’t know.
We have been warned not to go anywhere and to remove anything that may become a potential airborne missile [what?]. Naturally I took all the important stuff indoors and put all my rubbish up on the roof. That’ll save on the price of a skip?
But seriously, lads! It’s only a bit of wind? What can possibly go wro
Just stay safe.
Have a read through this lot.
https://www.netweather.tv/forum/topic/88598-hurricane-ophelia/?page=79
Not all of them obviously, life really is too short. Folks seem to trust gubmint and experts more than thine own eyes and experience.
Here in what is termed the north western bit of the British isles, England, United Kingdom, Britain (so many names for the same bit of land) known locally as ‘this shit hole’ it is currently mild for the time of year with a light breeze blowing occasionally from the south east. Since getting up there has been Armageddon grey skies, swiftly moving layers of clouds, yellow clouds, pinky yellow clouds, orange sun and now ‘normal colour sun’. So nice now I’m off to harvest some wlld apples with only a cagoule for protection from the elements.
For some sense not hysteria on this ophelia thing go here https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2017/10/14/hurricane-ophelia/
Sure youse lot in the UK are getting off very lightly. We’re getting the brunt of the storm and it is pretty bad. Winds gusting at over 100 mph even inland. We have had a few gusts here that made me hold my breath and it’s getting worse. [Branch just bounced off the window! Nothing broken, except the branch.]
Well back from the harvest and during the two mile or so wander between the wild trees clear skies and the sun shone with the wind noticeably picking up and now coming from a southerly direction where this morning it was more south westerly.
Now back indoors and the sky has filled with slow and fast moving clouds. They appear to be on two levels with the lower ones shifting and the upper ones lazing about.
The met office here has the area under an ‘amber’ alert which seems to correspond with the Irish met offices, orange alert yet nothing seems ‘out of the ordinary’ for the time of year, not even the temperature. In 2015 I painted the back of the house over a period of two weeks in October and every day was warm and still.
Strange that all the data on this storm has come from satellites until it arrived in the emerald Isle. It was only 36 hours ago the ‘experts’ were predicting land fall in Portugal then hanging a left and going to hit Cornwall and southern Ireland at the same time.
Anyway has the cat ventured out for a crap or has it found somewhere indoors to do its business?
Our colour alert went up to Red for the whole country yesterday. All schools closed and all transport shut down. The forecasting seems to have been pretty accurate and the only question here was whether it would track up the country or up the west coast. It chose the latter which meant the southern half of the country took the brunt.
Our cat has ventured out twice today – each time for about five microseconds.
I’ve been following this particular hurricane since it was an inception and it seemed to have Ireland in mind as a destination. No waffling about at the breeding grounds, it just swerved NNE and headed straight for you.
Stay safe, my friend.
It did seem to have a single-minded determination all right. Normally our crowd try to make mountains out of molehills but this time around they seem to have been right. It has been, and still is quite breezy!
We got a bit of a thumping down here in Cork for about seven hours with gusts well over a hundred miles per hour everywhere. Huge trees are down all over Mayfield and many roads have smashed roof slates lying about. Stadium roofs was torn off three or fours sports fields but worst of all, one of the wife’s potted plants was smashed on our patio. The full service for the dead plant will be held when the Church re-opens and of course Grandad, you are invited to join us in prayer. I’ll let you know the details tomorrow!
Been looking at the downed trees and the majority where the rootball is visible, clearly do not have one big enough to support the top growth of the tree so it’s no wonder strong winds topple them.
Here’s a prime example. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DMQ5-AhX0AAtz-f.jpg
Are there creatures over there who go around in the ground eating tree roots without anyone noticing?
That rootball should be at least as wide as the branch spread.
Good Lord Bill, that’s all a bit technical for a poor Paddy! We have five high trees on the green in front of our house so we parked the fleet at the end of the park as a precaution. Though we are at the top of one hill, we are also at the bottom of another so we have some shelter from the worst of it. Several small branches were torn off and as I watched, these took off out to the main road and away. One huge tree possibly over seventy foot tall was lifted clean out of the green around the corner and deposited out onto the main road blocking all lanes. It took some serious power to do that.
Ha poor paddy indeed. Every Irishman I have ever worked with called themselves poor paddy.
With the tree roots it the same as building a house on shallow footings, preaching at the choir here methinks. A good friend was brought up in a house from birth to 24 when the house began sinking. Turns out it was built in a sand/shingle bank with less than a foot of footings done during ‘the war’ as materials were short, clearly profiteering wasn’t.
24 foot tall house or 70 foot tall tree both will go over if they are not ‘firmly rooted’.
That is terrible! A whole pot plant? It puts everything else into perspective?
Unfortunately it’s unlikely my prayers will be able to make it, what with trees blocking roads and buses being off the road.
Amazing that you still have the interweb! It’s usually the first thing to go over here, followed by the lecky, then trees and fun stuff like that!
Indeed Distant Relative! Winds of 190 KPH were recorded in West Cork as the blast made it’s way East to the city. But the lights stayed on in Chateau Mallon throughout.
The one thing I expected was a power cut. They are reporting something like 400,000 without power at the moment [and some will be off for over a week] but by some miracle, I am still live and kicking. But the evening is young yet….
There are gentlemen of a certain age reading this and I have a question for them. Do any of you recall the effects Debby hand on the island?
I was ‘here’ but only a few months into ‘this life’ and sadly have no recollection of Debby let alone the winter of ’63 where snow and ice lay all around for months.
Of course I mean hurricane Debby.
I was living in northern England at that time and remember the winters. The big panic then was the coming Ice Age.
Around 14:00 the skies here in Norfolk went from bright sunshine (ALWAYS a bad omen) to a bizarre mix of Götterdämmerung black and deep kidney failure jaundiced yellow. Also the wind picked up a bit, but that’s all we’re getting it seems according to the weather report …we’ll just get the tail end (willy end?) of Ophelia after she has staggered in hen party circles around Scotland.
The wind part was down to Ophelia all right, but the yellow skies were the Sahara Desert. Apparently there was a fair quantity of sand sucked up and that caused the weird light. They showed a shot of the London skyline on the news last night – quite impressive!
From yesterday….
The wife hasn’t stopped staring through the window since this storm started. If it gets any worse I’m going to have to let her in.
😀