OPINION: Weather warnings and future dilemmas for Mayo and the West

There had been rough weather in the preceding days, but a calm had arrived and the currachs were launched to fish a few kilometres offshore. Groups of young men from Cleggan and from the Inishkeas knew that the barometer was reading low, but they took the risk. They had no inkling that a violent storm was bearing down on the west coast.

On the night of October 27, 1927, many boats were lost and 26 men from Cleggan and 12 from the Inishkeas were drowned. The loss to the island community was so great that the Inishkeas were abandoned shortly afterwards.

Advances in weather forecasting were slow to come. Weather stations were mainly land based, so vital data on conditions out to sea were scarce. But analysts were gradually learning how to study the formation and movements of weather systems.

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A notable instance was just before the launch of the D-Day Allied invasion of German-occupied France in June 1944. General Eisenhower had a narrow window of opportunity in which to launch the massive sea-borne invasion, and the optimum time was threatened by bad weather in the English Channel.

At the Blacksod Point weather station, Maureen Flavin Sweeney, the local postmistress, took her regular weather readings and forwarded them to the Met Office in Dublin. Ireland’s position on Europe’s northwestern edge gave it early notice of weather heading towards the English Channel. The Met Office sent the data onwards to London, where analysis suggested that there would likely be a lull in the bad weather in the Channel for June 6. So the invasion went ahead, one day later than originally planned. A bad forecast here might have doomed the invasion to failure or to extended delay.

By 1997, weather forecasting had become more sophisticated and data from weather stations could be quickly gathered and processed by computers to generate short-term predictions.

In August 1997, a fleet of some hundreds of yachts set out from the Isle of Wight to round the Fastnet Rock lighthouse off the Cork coast. The UK Met Office forecast indicated gales, but that did not deter well-experienced sailors. They could handle gales. What they did not know, and what the forecasters failed to predict, was that two low pressure areas were merging and deepening, generating violent storm force conditions in the Fastnet area. Nineteen lives were lost and many boats foundered.

Modern monitoring
We live in a very different world today. If you have a mobile phone – and most of us do – you can access weather forecasts of astonishing accuracy that are reliable over a seven-day horizon, are indicative over a 14 day horizon and are free. Pay a bit and you can access small-area, hourly forecasts and you will be able to judge if the planned garden party for grandma or the outdoor wedding reception is likely to be disrupted by rain or wind.
Satellites of various kinds monitor every square kilometre of the globe and give real time pictures of evolving weather systems. Using these as inputs to sophisticated mathematical models, massive super-computer systems produce forecasts that can be constantly corrected and improved.
The impact of the recent violent Storm Éowyn on the west coast was terrifying, but its arrival was well signalled in advance and nationwide safety warnings were issued.
There was initial surprise that a hurricane was actually heading in our direction. This kind of event is meant to occur elsewhere, perhaps in Africa or Asia, where hundreds of subsequent deaths receive modest coverage in our media. We feel compassion, contribute to disaster relief, but the victims are far away and their plight is slightly abstract.
We have had limited experience of other types of extreme weather events too. The dramatic heavy rainfall of the kind that caused flooding havoc and many deaths in Valencia on October 29 last year has not been part of our history. We fondly believe that the forest fires that devastated the eastern regions of Greece last year, and recently incinerated the mansions of Los Angeles, would find it difficult to get going in our damp land that is devoid of much forest cover.
Previous Irish storms have caused power outages, but of relatively short duration. A day without electricity is bearable. But a week-long interruption is truly grim. We have become utterly dependent on electricity for water, lighting, cooking, heating, TV, broadband and much else. Large institutions can install back-up systems, but individual households seldom do.

The vulnerable west
The big, unanswered question is whether Storm Éowyn was a random ‘black swan’ event (difficult to predict since it is not part of a pattern) or part of an emerging, deteriorating pattern of climate-change disruption. The problem with climate change is that it initially takes place slowly but can reach a tipping point, after which change becomes dramatic and almost irreversible. So, hidden within any gradually deteriorating pattern of climate change there are likely to be ever-increasing extreme events: hurricanes, monsoons, drought and extremes of heat and cold.

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Defending ourselves against future extreme events is costly and politically unpopular, as the Green Party recently discovered. In our Northwest region, with its low population density and scattered towns, villages and individual isolated houses, it is difficult enough to secure funding for improved infrastructure in good times. Imagine how hard it will be to secure funding for the protection of such a region from the consequences of extreme climate-change events when the overriding priority will be to protect large centres of population.
I have little faith that our over-centralised governance system can even discuss this dilemma, let alone come up with effective and equitable solutions. The west remains as vulnerable as it was that fateful night in 1927.

John Bradley is a former ESRI professor and has published on the island economy of Ireland, EU development policy, industrial strategy and economic modelling. He lives in Murrisk, Co Mayo.