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A MARINE BUOY that had come adrift during Storm Bert in November has washed up on Reenroe beach in Ballinskelligs, Co Kerry today during Storm Éowyn.
The buoy, which belongs to the UK Met Office, is usually moored in a fixed location. After Storm Bert set it loose, the Met Office then lost contact with it during Storm Darragh in early December.
The moored buoy is one of eleven in the Met Office’s network of Marine Automated Weather Stations.
The X account for Carlow Weather posted a picture of the buoy washed up on land earlier today.
A follower has reported a @metoffice weather buoy has washed up on reenroe beach Ballinskelligs in Kerry today after #StormÉowyn
— Carlow Weather (@CarlowWeather) January 24, 2025
ODAS 62 seems to be print on it, anyone know where it has been deployed? Thanks to Roisin for photo. pic.twitter.com/NAKu7JT0sA
In reply, the Met Office said: “It is a marine buoy that is usually moored in a fixed location. This one came adrift during Storm Bert, and then we lost contact with it during Storm Darragh. Good of Éowyn to return it for us!”
It added that maritime organisation Irish Lights were securing the buoy to prevent it from washing away, and Met Office engineers are planning to retrieve it when conditions allow.
Out of the water each buoy stands 6 metres tall, measures 3 metres in diameter, and weighs 4.5 tonnes. They have anchor cables several kilometres in length to moor it in the deep ocean.
A moored buoy is deployed by a ship and operates for up to two years between service visits.
The buoys measure air pressure, air temperature, sea temperature, humidity, wind speed, wind direction, wave height and wave period. Its data enables the production of weather forecasts amongst other things.
Three of the buoys are in coastal inshore waters, six are in open-ocean locations to the west of the British and Irish Isles, and two, jointly owned with the French, are in the deep waters off the Bay of Biscay.
These are supplemented by six moored buoys operated by Ireland and one by the Jersey Met Department.
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Buoys just wanna have fun
Would salvage rights apply here? Might be a few quid in it.
@honey badger: many many years ago after a storm my uncle claimed salvage rights on a yacht that beached at Bannow Island Wexford the owner actually bought it back off him. I often he’d sell sand to the Arabs
@Nemethon: Deadly. Cash in the paw!
Pity it didn’t end up in Cork. Then they could have said ‘That’s life buoy!’
@JB Software: It’s a pity it didn’t have a bell attached. In Cork it’d be known as a clanger.
“Six metres tall” “Is that a buoy,or a boy?” “A buoy!” “That’s a good-sized buoy” “Right” “Big boy,though”
@Larry Betts: The Americans pronounce it “boo…ee”.
@Brian Hunt: Most of them can’t pronounce it at all.
Strong the force is.
another good job by the working from home met office
Bertie buoy
Is there a convention on use/non-use of the term “British Isles” by Irish media?
@Colm Flaherty: British Isles is a globally accepted geographical term with no political content. Or do you want to go the Trump route as in “Gulf of America”?
@Nick Vasilakis: in Ireland and the EU we prefer to use the term “these islands’ or the British and Irish Isles.
have your say