We need your help now
Support from readers like you keeps The Journal open.
You are visiting us because we have something you value. Independent, unbiased news that tells the truth. Advertising revenue goes some way to support our mission, but this year it has not been enough.
If you've seen value in our reporting, please contribute what you can, so we can continue to produce accurate and meaningful journalism. For everyone who needs it.
Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
By continuing, you are indicating that you accept our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.
PRETTY SOON WE will all have had our fill of the Beast from the East, the influx of Siberian air that’s set to have us all cowering under duvets with multiple hot water bottles until the week is out.
A common thread of the coverage of the Beast thus far has been a comparison with the innovatively-monikered Big Snow of 1982.
Yes, 36 years ago Ireland was gripped in a similar frosty grip as Old Man Winter gave one last petulant kick before giving way to spring.
gráinne ohagan / TwitterWonder will we get snow like this? Snow of 1982! 10ft drifts in the laneway to our house at the back of @DublinAirport , where runway 28/10 is now @FrankOHagan @gercor1035 #BeastFromTheEast @MetEireann pic.twitter.com/HYaZ4Lr9TB
— 💃🏼Gráinne O’Hagan💃🏼 (@gra5105) February 26, 2018
On 8 January that year, a severe cold snap kicked in which saw the whole island covered in snow for 10 days. The Big Snow was appropriately named – the unprecedented blizzard saw record levels of snow and saw many areas cut off from the rest of civilisation.
Obviously there have been more recent cold snaps (in 2010 and 2011 for example). In 1982, as now, however the east of the country was the worst affected, with 25 centimetres of the wintry white stuff falling at Dublin Airport.
The snowstorm resulted in traffic chaos across the country, and saw fuel and food shortages together with mass school (for as long as two weeks in some places) and workplace closures. Not that everyone minded of course.
It was the worst such spell of wintry conditions seen since the unprecedented winter of 1963 – the similarly imaginatively-titled Big Freeze.
Brendan O’Brien, in a report for RTÉ News, told of some of the ways life had been affected along the east coast.
55,000 homes were left without electricity across the country within 24 hours of the blizzard hitting, while drivers and householders were left having to dig themselves out of massive snowdrifts.
Train stations and airports were forced to close, with 400 passengers left stranded overnight at Dublin’s Heuston Station due to frozen railway points.
And, in a break from the norm with such weather events, the capital was as badly affected (worse really) as everywhere else, with most of the main traffic channels into Dublin rendered impassable.
Winter had well and truly come.
As bad as that?
So is the Beast really going to be as bad as the Big Snow? Probably not.
“It’s certainly unlikely to be a record event, in terms of duration or impact, but it’s not really clear how it will unfold,” Peter Thorne, Professor of Physical Geography at Maynooth University, told TheJournal.ie.
The major potential for snow is on Thursday or Friday, but we’ll know more as the forecasts emerge today.
Thorne is of the opinion that Met Éireann “is quite right” not to have put any red-level warnings out regarding the coming storm. “Until we know more it’s the right approach.”
It seems that the level of impact (particularly the level of precipitation – snowfall in this instance) the Beast will have depends on a front of low pressure emerging from Iberia, and how it interacts with the Siberian low temperatures encroaching from the east.
“If that front turns left 50 kilometres early, Ireland will be spared the worst. If it turns left 50 kilometres later, we’re going to see a far greater impact. It comes down to really small variances in the prediction model,” says Thorne. “We’ll know more in a couple of days.”
He says that the coming storm will have more in common with the big freezes of 2010 and 2011, which were far from pleasant (and lead to the immortalisation of this poor soul), but will have nothing on the events of 1982, or 1963 (when The Big Freeze lasted a frankly ludicrous four months with recorded temperatures as low as -22.2 degrees celsius), or even 1947 for that matter.
“But it’s such a rare event today. We have to question that. Because the main reason is climate change – put simply it’s just warmer now than it was 50 or 60 years ago,” says Thorne.
It’s certainly going to be cold, there will be snow, and we need to be thinking of looking after the vulnerable, and of taking precautions, like leaving a tap dripping to stop a freeze in your pipes.
“But it’s very late in season, and the sun is warm, so I don’t think we’re looking at a very long-lived event.
So, we may be in for a week of red cheeks and frostbitten fingers, but the Beast has its work cut out if it wants to be as troublesome as the Big Snow. Let battle commence.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
I haven’t even got the kettle out for the car windscreen yet. I’m very confused.
@Hank_Scorpio: get your coffee & weetabix then you’ll be sorted!
@Hank_Scorpio: have to agree hank it seems to be colder by day than night … something is just not right ..
@John Hayes: You’re not suggesting white walkers? And me without any Dragon Glasd!
@Hank_Scorpio: apparently the air is dry which is why no frost. Read that somewhere last week.
@Lukevic101: anybody spot the small truck in the first clip doing flying past doing at leat 60
I love how the author mocks the ‘innovatively monikered’ Big Snow of ’82.
At least people waited for the Big Snow to have fallen before it got named.
I’ve just about recovered from the two branches that fell off my tree during storm Ophelia and now this? It’s just not fair
So many articles about a bit of snow. I’m currently in Hungary, it’s -10 snowing and people are store shelves are full. There’s no need to panic Ireland.
@Roy Dowling: we’re all just worried about ‘being in
It’s likely to be another met.ie non event.
We need new meteorologists in this country.
The yr.no boys are suggesting several millimetres overnight. Millimetres, not centimetres or inches….
@Me_a_monkey: or not…..this time!
@Me_a_monkey: and if they said nothing and a major event occurred you’d be the first on whinging about it.
@Me_a_monkey: where do they say the volume of snow
Ah 82, the joys of being a culchie, sliding down a hill on a plastic bag. Great craic altogether.
It will not compare to 1963 or 1947.
@Adam Reid: 67 or 81 were worse.
Huh, more white on a powdered donut.
Panic buying, wrapping the kids in bubble wrap, crisis averted.
More fake news and people swallow it . Its lovely out
@The flute smoker: where you are¡¡¡?!
@The flute smoker: Yawn.
@The flute smoker: for now…..
For some real science check out space weather com. If this low level of solar activity continues for the next 7 months winter 2018/9 will be brutal.
Sunspot number: 11
What is the sunspot number?
Updated 27 Feb 2018
Spotless Days
Current Stretch: 0 days
2018 total: 27 days (47%)
2017 total: 104 days (28%)
2016 total: 32 days (9%)
2015 total: 0 days (0%)
2014 total: 1 day (<1%)
2013 total: 0 days (0%)
2012 total: 0 days (0%)
2011 total: 2 days (<1%)
2010 total: 51 days (14%)
2009 total: 260 days (71%)
Updated 27 Feb 2018
@Joe Caulfield: This looks like nothing other than the standard 11-year solar activity cycle, I’m not sure what your point is?
@Joe Caulfield: why do you keep repeating this post, are you trying to plug them?
It’s going to be cold. Just wrap up when outside. In 82 people did nothing expecting someone else to take care of the snow in their front garden.
@prop joe: What’s a front gargen¿
@prop joe: Imagine how bad it will be now we have millenials
@prop joe: Trust the ponces from Delgany to have a fancy home video camera in 1982
@Mark Johnson: Jealousy is worse than envy¡
Ah that week in the winter of ’82, I remember it…so badly. I don’t remember how much snow fell, how long it lasted for or anything like that. I do remember we had fun thought…
So now that there isn’t a loaf of bread or a pint of milk left in the country, there’s only one thing to do – get a thick plastic sack, find a steep hill and enjoy life :-)
@Tom Purcell: I remember it so well. Living in a student house in Ranelagh with 10 others. I shared a room in what would now be deemed the attic. Freezing was an understatement. We also had a resident rat in the kitchen, literally. Millenials, indeed. The fear of litigation rules the world and how we perceive the world. What will happen when a real disaster raises its head?
2 feet in Kells….
@Bruce Miller: pics or GTFO
@Me_a_monkey: ¿¿¿
@Bruce Miller: proof of 2 feet of snow in kells! Radar suggests nothing!
@Me_a_monkey: Get a new freakin radar m8¡
@Bruce Miller: 2 feet..lucky man. Last night I got legless
@Bruce Miller: You must be in East Kells,I’m in West Kells and it’s yet to hit us
@Bruce Miller: How many arms in Kells?
@DeFonz: south kells here. Polar bears causing traffic mayhem on Slane road. If my boss is on this I don’t think I’ll make it in today…..
@Bruce Miller: Ah! I got up this morning, got dressed and then my other half told me I have my shoes on the wrong feet – the two in Kells might be mine…(yeah I know bad!)
Drama queens….
There will be some snow tomorrow and possibly Thursday but I think RTE and indeed Met Eireann have caused unnecessary panic as usual – morons
Actually when you look at what Met are saying and the warning system in place it actually makes sense. It’s the media and rags like this that are obsessed with freaking people out. As for RTE anything that could disrupt their warm cup of cocoa land in D4 is horrifying for them. It’s best to stick to the science and probabilities.
@Patrick J. O’Rourke: Warning systems make sense, that’s clearly evident, the point I am making is the inaccuracies from Met Eireann and the sensationalism from the Irish media, in particular rte – take a look http://www.thejournal.ie/met-eireann-complaints-2908095-Aug2016/
The Beast from the East is 1982 x 100 that’s right it’s 198,200
Drama queens all over country!!!!!!
@William Gorry: You really need to relax and not take yourself to seriously.
Can’t wait
The real year of ‘The Big Snow’ was 1947. There was bad snow in 1982 and heavy snow in 1962/63.
I remember ’82. Wasn’t as much as a snowflake fell on Cork City
@Terry Bradshaw: yup rest of the country destroyed even cobh! but not a bloody flake in the city!
The Big Snow of 1982 was one helluva thing. Trains, buses, taxis all stopped, vegetables couldn’t be delivered from the Markets to shops, impossible to drive cars on slippy ice-laden roads. No way to get to work. That continued for almost 3 weeks.
No heat at home because of no electricity to fire up the CH boiler. Ran out of coal, logs, turf and briquettes after 4 days for the live fire in our home. Neighbours with Gas gracefully boiled our tea water and cooked our meals.
The great thing was that the local pub had a live, warming fire going all day, the pub lit up by romance-like candles at night. So we all spent our days in the pub (it was so cold there was no need for pubs to cool the drinks) and we went to bed early under our body-heated blankets, hugged each other together to keep warm and made babies (inadvertently, like ya know).
These babies are the adults, the so-called “Millenials” of today that caused an unprecedented demand for houses about 2005-2006, leading to the Big Crash of 2007-2008.
Place your bets now that infant schools will face another “unprecedented” demand for school places in 4/5 yrs time and that in 25 yrs time we will have another”unprecedented” demand for houses for the coming “Beast of the East”-conceived babies, in 25 yrs time. We can call them in due time, the “Beast Children of the Millenials”.
I bet the ESRI and the present Govt hasn’t built that happening into its 2040 Plan – they won’t cop that – like it wasn’t copped back in 1982 – that it needs to be planned for.
Place your long-term bets now Folks… You’ll be on to a winner and – for once – fleece the bookies.
have your say