Glad to hear you and your family are okay, Anto.
Big weather in a big country, John. I remember diving into a foxhole which suddenly turned out big enough to hold three scared boys when lightning struck near us the day one of those afternoon thunderstorm so characteristic of the Highveld caught us out in the open.
The hurricane passed over us at 140kph. Just as well the big eucalyptus over the living room patio was cut back last year, because some of its lower branches swayed alarmingly near my study window in even a light breeze. That would have done considerable damage during the hurricane. (It was cut back drastically mainly because we feared that it would fall the other way, onto the big tank for the heating oil; that could have been nasty.) Last year we also regretfully chopped down a red lantern tree which turned out to have very shallow roots for its huge size. That too would have gone in the hurricane, and in a heavily walled patio, probably round and round, damaging whatever it touched. We lost electricity for most of a day. Today the shops are mostly closed as they clean up, and a helicopter whizzes back and forth overhead, whether carrying supplies to cut off places, doing duty as an ambulance, or ferrying politicians making a survey of the damage, I can't tell as it flies just out of sight. Mobile phones are out but we have a landline as well, and that has its own power. I've just come in from rebuilding one of my wife's sheds that got ripped out of its moorings but the damage is minimal because we're sheltered on the "right" side of a hill, most of the work being righting pot plants and sweeping up leaves and twigs and branches.
Beautiful sunshine day outside, right now at 1545. A ride was scheduled for today but everyone else is also cleaning up, some with gardens wrecked but fortunately no worse, so, in the schoolboy joke, "Tuesday was cancelled for lack of interest."
Making routine passage around Cape Horn under sail was more frightening every time and lasted a damn sight longer. Or perhaps now that I'm old and have less to lose, I've become careless; however that may be, I slept through the worst of Ophelia.
Interesting photos at
http://www.irishmirror.ie/news/irish-news/ireland-braces-itself-storm-brian-11354401
