“It’s a Sign!”
I am active in Irish weather and people in parts of north, west and central counties (of Ireland, and all of N.I.) said it was one of the worst windstorms they have seen in recent years. A lot of trees were blown over. In Galway, the largest town in western Ireland, a large clock tower was ripped up and the clock landed on a sidewalk of a narrow street in a busy shopping area downtown, very luckily nobody was hit by it. As usual, the resident idiot population went out to take pictures of massive waves on very low seawalls and piers, again luckily nobody was swept away. The storm was not as severe in Cork, Waterford or Dublin. It was basically the same disturbance that hit the eastern U.S. last Friday, with 5 inches of snow around DC and Philadelphia, 2 inches or less in NYC. Once off the coast it exploded into quite a deep Atlantic storm and went rapidly across the ocean hitting Ireland Sunday afternoon and evening. Winds on North Sea oil platforms east of Scotland, and high elevations in Scotland, recorded winds of 80-90 mph. The storm is now dying out around the Franz Josef Land arctic islands north of Russia.