North Atlantic Skyline » snow

Binn an tSaighdiúra

John Smyth — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 21:51:34 +0000

A walker (just visible as a dot on the skyline) descending the snow-covered summit of Binn an tSaighdiúra today. Winter has officially ended in Ireland since the beginning of March – and it has been a very mild and wet winter – but a drop in temperature over the weekend resulted in some snow and hail showers in Connemara. It won’t last – much of the snow visible in the morning had melted by the time we had finished our hike in the Twelve Bens mountain range.

Rising sun

John Smyth — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 00:41:04 +0000

The sun rising over the church at the summit of Croagh Patrick during Christmas Week, 2010.

Croagh Patrick Colour Cast

John Smyth — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 00:11:58 +0000

The snow on Croagh Patrick turned a nice shade of red, then pink, as the sun rose over Clew Bay on the Monday before Xmas [though not as red as my nose from the cold]. In the distance, Nephin mountain looms over the other side of the bay.

On an unrelated note, the nominations for the 2011 Irish Blog Awards are open until the end of the week.

Iced Over

John Smyth — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 00:12:09 +0000

On Christmas morning 2009, I took a picture of the temperature reading on my car dashboard. I was in Carrick-on-Shannon, snow lay on the ground and it was minus 8 degrees Celcius. It was the coldest reading I had seen on my car’s temperature gauge thus far. On Christmas Day 2010, the car gauge read minus 12 in Eyre Square at 8.30 in the morning. It was the coldest I had seen in the city, but temperatures in the west of Ireland regularly dipped well below that temperature. The lowest temperature I witnessed myself was minus 15 near Athenry a few days before Xmas, but temperatures were lower than that in the north of the country.

The cold spell was long-lived by Irish standards, and in many towns and cities, frozen pipes meant no water for many people. Lakes and rivers froze too – even the Shannon. The picture above [taken on Dec 23rd] shows the river Suck (which flows into the Shannon) near the bridge at Ballyforan on the Roscommon/Galway border. The water near the bridge flowed freely but 50 metres downstream, the river surface was completely frozen.

Here is a view of the river when it is not frozen.