Abysmal Autumn weather

a few leaves still hanging on

The past week has been abysmal weatherwise. We had Hurricane Epsilon on Thursday, Storm Aidan on Saturday, an unnamed low today and another tomorrow. We've had torrential rain, thunder and lightning -- something I've never experienced in Ireland, hail, sleet and wind, lots of wind. The buy off the coast here, M6, recorded a 30-metre (90f)t wave and the surfers were out having a blast. 

We had 227.9 mm rain in October, that's 67 mm more than last year in the same period. All the other variables were pretty average for the month. 

We've picked the apples but waited to pick the remaining pears which were beautiful this year, but they were all gone. Alex thinks the crows stole them. I just don't know. The berries are almost done now, just a few raspberries and strawberries left, mostly rotting in the wet weather or getting freeze-dried by the wind. 

The wine is clarifying. We will soon bottle the two or three bottles and wait for the requisite time period to sample. With our second lockdown underway and unable to travel more than 5 km from home, we're keeping ourselves busy. 

What a year! The American elections are tomorrow, and we voted long ago by email and mail ballot as we are both dual citizens. We can always be hopeful. 

We've been picking the remaining grapes to eat...very tasty

 

Pinot noir on the left
Albarino on the right

Three-year-old vines up the hill

The calm between the storms

So beautiful, but no blue moon

Peachy sunset

Post-Lorenzo

Well, we got off lucky. The vineyard suffered little damage, just some broken branches, from extra-tropical cyclone Lorenzo.  The orchard did okay, too, with just a few pears on the ground. The donkeys were not seen during the hurricane at all and we suspect they were hiding in their hollow on the north side. The winds were howling from the SE and then SW all day and all night, but the worst we got was 65 knots (120 km/hr). No damage that we could see to house or land, and our friend's boat was undamaged on our mooring.

Mace Head, at the northern corner of Galway Bay had a little less and our boat did fine in Kilrush up the Shannon River. So all in all, not too bad for the strongest hurricane (Category 5 at one stage) to come as far north and east in history. 

The donkeys have since all been accounted for. All nine came down to say Hi yesterday.

🔴 Mace head in the last hour had a gust of 108km/h and also had an average mean wind speed (10mins) of 87km/h. 🔴

🔺 The 87km/h mean speed would be under Red Warning Criteria. 🔺

Met Eireann's Red Warning Criteria;

Mean Speeds in excess of 80 km/h
Gusts Speeds in excess of 130 km/h

Obviously there was no Red Warning but just shows there may be no wind in some parts of the country but others can be much worse!

Highest Wind gust at Weather Alerts Ireland HQ was 51km/h yesterday.