Galway escapes worst of the weather

Date Published: 04-Jan-2012

GALWAY took a heavy buffeting from the Atlantic storm that blew in on Monday night/Tuesday morning last, but escaped relatively unscathed from the winds that topped 100mph off the coast of Donegal.

Electricity supplies were affected to a few hundred houses in the Creagh area of Ballinasloe and in the Woodford/Derrybrien area for a time on Tuesday morning but power was restored later that day.

Gardai described driving conditions as extremely hazardous on Monday night and into the early hours of Tuesday morning but reported that thankfully there had been no serious accidents reported.

Telephone and broadband connections were knocked out to a number of areas in Galway but a spokesperson for Eircom said yesterday that almost all faults had now been sorted out.

Water levels are reported to be extremely high in rivers, lakes and streams across the county with all farmland described as ‘saturated’ – December was a very wet month bringing over 200mms. (8 inches) of rainfall.

The good news from Met. Eireann is that the weather looks set to settle down over the weekend with high pressure to the South bringing generally mild, calm and relatively dry conditions between now and mid-week. The highest wind speed during the storm was 168kph (104mph) off Malin Head, Donegal, on Tuesday morning.

An ESB spokesman told the Connacht Tribune that Galway had escaped relatively unscathed in terms of power cuts.

“A number of houses were without power in the Woodford area of South Galway and the Creagh area of Ballinasloe for a time on Monday night and into Tuesday morning but supply was restored later on Tuesday.

“The ESB has invested significantly in improving its infrastructure and supply lines and I think that we reaped the benefit of this in Galway during the storm,” said the spokesman.

A Garda spokesman said that while there had been a number of minor accidents reported there was nothing serious on the roads during the storm.

See full story and photos in this week’s Connacht Tribune.