Rocking the Boat

From what we have been told, Northern Ireland does not get snow.  So one can imagine our surprise two weeks ago Thursday when our Sainsbury’s grocery delivery man told us about a “monster storm” that was headed our way.  He informed us to expect hurricane force winds and 30 centimeters (about 12 inches) of snow and power outages.  Thursday night brought us lots of wind, but no winter weather monster; then we woke up on Friday.  The foretold snow was now accompanying the wind, and it only continued to accumulate.  Dave and I both agreed that we have been in wind storms where the wind blew harder, and snow storms where the snow came down harder, but never have we been in a storm where the wind joined forces with such wet snow to create simply miserable conditions.  I had to go out for a bit in the elements, and when I returned home found myself having to change my jeans because the wind had blown the wet snow so hard that they looked like they had just been taken out of the laundry machine.  As Friday evening came, it was clear that we were not going to benefit from a reprieve any time soon.  For several hours, we experienced the lights diming, only to glow back to their full brightness as they decided whether or not to stop working completely.  When they did make up their mind to die, thankfully our electricity was only out for a brief 15 minutes before it was fully restored.  When we woke up the next morning, the streets and sidewalks were a mess.  Since Belfast is not accustomed to snow, no one owns a snow shovel to clear away the snow.  It ended up being easier to walk down the middle of the road (on side-streets) than to try and plow our path through the heavy and wet slush that had decided to stay a few days.  Looking back on it, we really were lucky.  A friend of ours from church who lives just 20 minutes outside of Belfast lost power for 30 hours.  One of our friend's dad is a farmer who lost several lambs due to the frigid air, and his neighbor, another farmer, herded his sheep into his barn to keep them warm, only to have the heavy and wet snow accumulate on the barn roof and cave in, killing his entire flock.  There were so many people without power that the Republic of Ireland sent up crews to Northern Ireland to aid in the restoration of power.  One of Dave’s colleagues told us yesterday that in the hills surrounding Belfast, there is still 5 feet of snow, and the Belfast Zoo was closed for the first time in history on Easter due to the snow.  The BBC reported that 140,000 people went without power -- that’s a lot of people if you figure that Northern Ireland is roughly the size of Connecticut.  A friend of ours said that Belfast has not had a winter like this winter since 1963; we just happened to pick the winter that snow came back to Belfast.  Even though it wasn't a pleasant few days, we survived, albeit a little cold and damp.  After we had a few days to wrap our minds around the snow storm that came to Northern Ireland, we couldn’t help but be thankful for the relatively mild part of the storm we experienced.  Sometimes it takes a storm to rock your boat to make you thankful for the mild days through which to sail.

A picture from Belfast's Telegraph newspaper of farmers pulling their sheep from the snow

A picture from Belfast's Telegraph newspaper of a car outside of Belfast driving through a plowed street