Well over a century before the first whispers about global warming and changing weather patterns caused by human activities, Ireland had its worst ever storm, writes Hugh Oram.
It happened on the night of January 6th, 1839, which promptly went down in history as the night of the Big Wind, or An Ghaoth Mhór.
On the previous night, January 5th, there had been heavy snow right across the country. Then, as morning broke, an Atlantic warm front moved in, bringing a period of complete calm, with dense cloud cover. Temperatures rose rapidly throughout the day, melting all the snow. Then a deep Atlantic depression moved towards Ireland, bringing a cold front which collided with the warmer air, creating strong winds and heavy rain.
The first signs of the big wind came on the coast of Co Mayo around midday and the storm slowly moved across the country. By midnight, the wind had reached hurricane force and remained at that strength for about five hours. It swept across Ireland, doing tremendous damage in the north, the west, the midlands and all along the east coast. Munster was the only province to escape widespread damage.
In Dublin, about a quarter of all houses in the city were either badly damaged or destroyed and this pattern was repeated across the country. In Carlow town, the chimney that had been on one of the towers of the castle for the previous six centuries blew down. Some of the worst damage was in Co Mayo, where the storm first landed. In Castlebar, practically every house was wrecked and the town provided one of the most tragic stories of the storm. The Mooney family lived in a roadside cabin in the town; after it was wrecked, they had to live under a hedge. The parents then died from fever, leaving five children orphaned.
On the Westport House estate, 1, 500 trees were blown down. Scarcely a house in Westport itself escaped severe damage, while the town's one hotel (the Olde Railway) was badly damaged. Two ships were completely wrecked in Killala harbour.
The ferocity of the storm was such that seawater was swept inland for miles along the west coast, and seaweed and fish were later found far inland. For weeks afterwards, many people living well inland were still trying to clear the salty smell of the sea out of their houses.
Up to 300 people lost their lives, in the the storm. When dawn broke the following day, January 7th, the landscape across much of the country was devastated and many familiar landmarks had simply been swept away. People were dazed by the scale of the destruction.
In those days, insurance was almost unknown, so most people had to pay for their own repairs. For poorer families, it was a huge burden. Building workers did well, however, as did all the merchants supplying materials. For months afterwards, armies of bricklayers, carpenters, slaters and thatchers enjoyed an unprecedented demand for work.
The storm left its legacy to the landscape: for years afterwards, if someone in the country was building a new house, they chose a sheltered spot at the foot of a hill, in case another such storm should blow up. More people were left homeless by the Big Wind of 1839 than by evictions between 1850 and 1880.
At the time of the Big Wind, many theories were advanced as to its cause, some of them outlandish. Some people believed Freemasons had caused it by unleashing the devil from hell and failing to persuade him to return. Many thought that the following day, January 7th, was going to be Judgment Day.
The great storm was so well remembered that it came in useful when the British old-age pension was introduced to Ireland in 1909. People of 70 years and more became entitled to a state pension of up to five shillings a week. In those far-off days, birth certificates were quite rare and for many people to qualify for the pension, it was enough for them to say that they could remember stories of the Big Wind when they were very small children.
Curiously enough, although the Big Wind loomed large in folklore, not much has been written in more modern times about the phenomenon. A Northern writer, Peter Carr, did write a book called The Night of the Big Wind, published in Belfast in 1993, while Beatrice Coogan used the storm as the title of a novel. She used the events of January, 1839 as the backdrop for The Big Wind.
But more recent weather events of almost similar severity have been largely forgotten. How many people still remember the big snow of February, 1933, which was the biggest snowfall since 1867, or the big snow of 1947, which lasted for three months, from January until March? A more vivid memory, thanks not least to the name, is Hurricane Charlie, when over 12 cm of rain fell in a couple of hours.
It caused £25 millions worth of damage, considered an enormous amount at the time.