There are rumours and “long range prediction” of an upcoming storm after the big freeze of January 2025. All we read in the news are sensationalised “end of the world” scenario with an upcoming depression. Apparently a strong cold jetstream coming from North America was causing a pocket of very low pressure. That would mean a storm was brewing with strong winds

In the early days before the storm, a Thursday, we begin to get orange and then red warnings all over the news. The Met Eirienn’s weather app gets updated every few hours till the whole island went red. For a while, we thought that Northern Ireland will be spared the red warning. In fact, UK met office also started to issue red warning in Scotland for the storm

Storm was to hit on Thursday night and peaking from Friday morning till noon (in Dublin). On Thursday, it was announced that schools will be closed on Friday and public transport will not operate in the duration of the red warning. Shops announced that they will also be closed for the duration of the red warning. The day before, bread, milk and toiler papers were flying off the shelves. People were asked not to travel and shelter in place. Amazingly, throughout Thursday, weather was pretty good for January.

Record Breaking Storm

As it turned out, the red warning helped to reduce casualties. Apparently only one person in Donegal died when a tree fell on his car while he was going home and got trapped in the storm. about 1/3 of Irish household are without power, some without water as water treatment plants are not functional. As I write this, I got news my colleague’s mum had to be treated in ICU and has since discharged when 15 trees fell on her house and somehow a fired burned the house.

Our Experience

We stayed at home the whole day. Dublin is pretty sheltered when it comes to storm, as the west and south coastal areas got hit badly. What we can do is to keep checking with friends if they are still ok throughout the day. We can see that the winds are very strong, the water from the canal splashed so high we can see out from the window of our house. Since I continue to have power and internet, it was a normal “work from home” for me. Some colleagues did put up teams status that they may be impacted by the power disruption – and some certainly did

We were lucky, other than having to stay home we hardly felt the impact. Just as sudden as the storm came, it stopped leaving the people of Ireland to pick up the pieces. There are building damages but so far only one death, which is quite amazing. The warnings that they put out and regularly repeat the severity, maybe helped to hammer in the danger to people in the country.

At least we lived through this record breaking experience.