Friday was a day of deluges. It was bucketing in Castlebar. We had 12.8 mm of rain here, mainly within 2 hours of mid-day.
Saturday was a beautiful day but Sunday, Storm Ashley was to bring lots of wind and rain overnight, a lull, and then lots of wind and rain in the afternoon. Let's hope the super high tides and storm surge aren't overwhelming. They were expecting a 12.5-metre swell. OMG! That's 41 feet.
What we actually had was a lot of wind with Storm Ashley. The power went out at about 1:30 am. I slept through the nighttime surge. I stayed indoors throughout the day. Our gusts topped out at 79.9 knots (92 mph). Many trees were downed and roads closed. The tide came up the driveway about halfway to our gate. That's a significant storm surge. They measured significant wave height at 19.5 metres (64 feet) off our coast here, which was significantly more than predicted.
The good news in the aftermath is that we had little damage. A broken tile on the roof. Some scattered furniture even though it was stowed behind the house. Overturned pots. But the polytunnel and shed are fine. No sign of the donkeys so they must be sheltering on the North side. Haven't gotten to Aleria to check on her yet but she's still there on her mooring, which is a good sign.
In the vineyard, we had a couple of broken supports. The vines are intact but desiccated. Otherwise, there is nothing major to report. The windows of the house are covered in salt so the salt spray must have showered the vineyard, now part of next year's terroir.
We were without power for 36.5 hours. We had our BYD Seal named Selkie powering the house. First the fridge, then mobiles, flashlights, lamps, and computers. It worked brilliantly. She came with a power cable that lets us use her huge battery to power household appliances. We were pleased that after 24 hours, she was down only 7% of battery capacity. We had the generator I bought at Lidl one impulsive day several years ago powering the vineyard fridge up in the shed. Overall, we were very pleased at our new capacity to cope self-sufficiently. Resilience is key to climate adaptation.
Thanks to ESB, we are now back on the mains. Dishwasher overloaded and running, laundry running, showers about to be had. Sleet dumping on the windows. The new normal.
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| Young Solaris are fine |
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| Rondo dried out |
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| Albarino not happy |
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| Generator cooling vineyard supplies fridge |
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| Polytunnel okay |
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| Salt covered windows |
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| Salt spray on the windows |
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The line of chestnut trees were stripped of most of their leaves
but are now providing good cover for the vineyard |
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| Ghostie supervising as always |
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| House running on Selkie's battery |
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| Morning cloud |
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| Not too bad |
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| Calmish morning, but still gusting in the 30s. |
