⚠️ Storm Éowyn - Fri 24.01.25 (**Please read Mod Instruction in OP.**)

We were here before it started and it was superbly modelled by the GFS ECM etc, no one was in any doubt it would be more damaging than Darragh so this Minister is talking the political guff. Just tell the truth, ye were hoping it wouldn't be, but you gambled the wrong way.

or by huge increases in electricity prices to fund the upgrading of the network in rural areas

We have been paying premium first world prices over the years for a functional first world network and what do we get…………?

It is disingenuous in the extreme to contend this is a problem caused by the rural nature of the network.

Galway City and suburbs with many faults already restored:

Athenry County Galway - with many faults already resolved

Tuam County Galway with many faults already resolved

Claremorris County Mayo with many faults already resolved

Should I continue?

extremely unlikely, BUT would anyone in Galway happen to have a gas canister 250 A4 that slots In the side of a portable gas stove?

Review on the storm from UK Met office.

If only we had a station in Mace Head in 1945, when we got just 1 kph lower at Foynes, 35 km inland. Who knows what Mace Head got that day.
During Éown, Shannon Airport, near Foynes, got nowhere near the speeds of Mace Head. The setup in 1945 suggests that Mace Head possibly got stronger winds than Foynes.

How do I embed an X post here?

https://x.com/BadWxStations/status/1883249226769145873

Your best bet is to put it on a Galway Facebook page or the Galway thread here on Boards.

The point is that the network is huge, so a better question to ask is whether the faults per km of lines is higher than the faults per km elsewhere.

The figure I heard to day is that Ireland has roughly 6x more km of power lines per head of population compared to EU average.

We just have an extremely low density scatter of housing in rural and quasi rural areas, which results in these meandering infrastructural networks. It was the same with broadband. DSL simply didn’t work as so many of the lines were very long. We’d something like half the number of telephone exchanges (mostly tiny ones) as the UK, serving a population 1/13th the size!

It’s basically decades of bad planning and an expectation of services in what are very out of the way locations — most countries have populations in and around villages and towns, not scattered to the four winds — you can see the issues when something like this hits.

When one considers the average network distance to a customer in Ireland is somewhere between four and six times that of our nearest neighbours it's understandable that standing charges would be higher.

I posted this in another thread.

The authorities couldn't even arrange to have foreign electricity crews actually landed here on Thursday 23rd last, instead of them arriving 4 days after the storm. They had enough notice, and they must have known how bad it was going to be.

I have heard it all now.

You are blaming the government.

What government would that have been the old one had been desolved and the new one was being prevented from forming

I blamed the authorities - i.e. the relevant authorities.

Are you really trying to hang this on the opposition?

You really have it out for any house built beyond the M50, don't you.

Thankfully, us resilient folks, with ties to our rural communities going back over a hundred years, have heard it all before. Blanchardstown Bluster.

Tell me, why do you think so many people, particularly young families, yearn to move West.? Do you really think it's to find a remote field somewhere and then build a house?

Or do you think its driven by an urge to create a better life for your family?

Are you unhappy in Dublin? If so, I would suggest a nice drive out across the Midlands, Cross the Bridge at Tarmonbarry. Stop and have a bite at thr purple onion. Visit Lough Key, head to Sligo to Mullaghmore. Stop. Listen to the silence. And think to yourself, you could live here.

Or, pop on a train to Westport. Right to the heart of our rural solitude. Maybe meet some locals. You'll actually meet more Dubs than locals who have fled the grey Jungle for a better life.

Parts of firhouse without power in south Dublin friend told me

I don't know 😕 what caused it I used to live there so alot of friends and family there , it's back in oldbawn anyway a friend told me. It's like here in carrick part went off yesterday afternoon and hasn't been restored yet

Not at all understandable when you look at the comparison of costs with our wider neighbours . I'm sure that many of these countries face greater challenges than this little island.

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Electricity_price_statistics

It's a disgrace, was gone for a good 3 hours, where is the Government?

Ok for folks in the sticks who are used to not washing but not us.

it really isn’t just the countryside though as was posted above. Living in a town here. There’s still a couple of faults in the town itself. Same seems to be true in multiple towns in the area. And that’s north Kildare not even the west!

Listening to the news at 9.

3000 poles and 900km of wire needed. The esb guy saying in areas the whole network is gone and they are starting again from scratch

What you are basically showing us there is that this extremely exceptional wind storm didn’t stop at the town boundary and continue on to the next available rural area

Ordinarily storms aren’t so strong that they affect larger towns to the extent this one did,or are so devastating that people resources fixing problems are stretched so thin that problems in towns have to wait in line for repairs too

Luckily storms like this one normally stay out in the Atlantic and head towards the artic

Met Eireann station didn't actually die, they lost comms for a few hours eventually got a 4G connection and restarted reporting. Unfortunately they don't have local storage apart from the limited space on their loggers so if a report is not uploaded, it's overwritten and lost.

is newstalk not literally a Dublin station??