Éowyn blasts through

While I spent yesterday doing a little light storm-prep, The Beloved took off for the Déise to visit with her sisters. On the way down, she fulfilled our quarterly trip to the Recycling Centre in New Ross, and on the way back, she dropped into the suoermarket for The Dinner. She reckoned that we could be without the use of an oven for several days, so came out with a couple of dinky pot-pies [yum: b/c designed by a food engineer]. The Waterford Blaa is one of very few regional specialties in Ireland [also rissoles in Wexford] and so she picked some up at the same time. It was the second last blaa six-pack on the shelf in an aisle which had been stripped of every sort of sliced pan and almost all the available bread. This morning RTE Brainstorm has a piece about comfort food and siege mentality panic buying. "Despite warnings that there's no need to go mad for the white sliced pan, the impending arrival of Storm Éowyn means many Irish kitchens have more white sliced pans than they might need." Thar she blows at peak Fizz:

I said I'd report back after Éowyn had barged through the country for a shortcut. At 10:00hrs the Sunny South East, incl us, stepped down from red wind to orange. And, amazingly, we still had power. Indeed I woke at 06:15 this morning and rushed down to make a flick-of-the-kettle hassle-free pot of tea: it was still gusty outside and a branch could fall at any minute somewhere along the 15km looping journey the ESB makes from the main grid to here at Castle Backwater. 700,000 Eircodes were without power at 08:00 this morning and the ESB crews cannot get started until it is safe to do so. Even with the best system of Utilitarian triage, fixing that many breaks is going to take several days. It is much better not to be on the list! It's also been pretty good for Dau.I and Dau.II who were both told to stay home from their public-facing jobs on full pay.

Postpubl Sunday noon 26Jan25: Eircodes w/o power maxed out at 768,000 (that's ⅓ of all 2.3m ESB clients). 109,000 w/o water. 183 km/h max gust speed on land.