Category Archives: Ireland

Blarney is Frozen

Schools are back this morning, but temperatures are staying around 2ºC (feels like -3ºC) which would be manageable except it rained around 4am this morning. Local roads are lethal, with vehicles already skidding and crashing.

A double-decker bus skidded on black ice at one end of the village and blocked the road completely.

Twenty minutes later, two delivery trucks jackknifed after coming down the hill coming from the opposite side of the village.

I live on a hill, and watched cars come down it very, very slowly. Thankfully, no incidents there yet.

Pictures come from the Blarney Blog on Facebook.

Extra bits:

Damien Boylan was on RTÉ Radio 1 talking about the freeze with Claire Byrne.

Barry Hoare is internet famous for capturing a video of the bus crashing just outside his garage. Part of his wall was demolished by the bus!

PS. I forgot to say, happy birthday Matt!

Final section of Macroom Bypass opens soon

The final section of the new road bypassing Macroom and other towns in Co Cork will be opening next month, hopefully. The existing sections make that drive a pleasure now, as we can bypass the bottleneck of Macroom, and avoid the twisting roads just west of Ballyvourney.

We drove to Killarney on Saturday morning to photograph the deer in Killarney National Park, and that road was lovely to drive. It’s disconcerting there’s no hard shoulder, but there are lay-bys at least. We passed through Ballyvourney around 7am, and saw a local shop was already open, but I wonder what effect the new road will have on local business?

On the way back, we stopped in The Mills, on the edge of that town, for lunch. It was well over a decade since I’d eaten there. The place was packed with diners, and even a Hen Party! The food was delicious and staff were friendly. Will it be so easy to get there next month, or will drivers have to drive through the entire town to visit?

The cheapest petrol in the county

Petrol in Ballinspittle is only €1.819/lt today. That’s the cheapest I’ve seen in a long time.

After listening to this Planet Money podcast about the cost of gasoline I wonder if we will have expensive petrol and diesel forever? Reason being, it’s unlikely that new oil refineries will ever be built again as demand for oil products plummet in the next decade. A guest on the show predicted that a barrel of oil will be $20-$30 in ten years time.

Electric cars are becoming a lot more attractive, but I won’t be looking to buy a new car for quite some time.

For you, my American reader, there are 3.78541 litres in a US gallon. That means the price of gasoline/petrol here is $6.89/gallon.

Aside from all this, the reduction in oil production will have a detrimental effect on sulphur production. It’s a by-product of that system and used by the metal and fertilizer industries. It’s cheap as chips now, but if there’s a shortage, the price of food will skyrocket.

Yikes. Any good news about the future?

Hot hot hot!

When a toddler is about to touch something hot, you warn them it’s “HOT HOT HOT!” What do you do when the world is overheating?

My phone says it’s 30C right now where I live, and in the Phoenix Park in Dublin it’s 33C, almost breaking the Irish temperature record set in 1835.

And Ireland is probably the coldest place in Europe today. How did we let this happen?

It’s a mystery…

Voice Over LTE is on now

My wife and I both noticed a new “VO LTE1” icon next to the 4G symbol on our phones this morning.

Apparently that’s Voice Over LTE.

Voice over Long-Term Evolution (VoLTE) is an LTE high-speed wireless communication standard for mobile phones and data terminals, including Internet of things (IoT) devices and wearables. VoLTE has up to three times more voice and data capacity than older 3GUMTS and up to six times more than 2GGSM. It uses less bandwidth because VoLTE’s packet headers are smaller than those of unoptimized VoIP/LTE.[1] VoLTE calls are usually charged at the same rate as other calls.

Wikipedia

So now you know if you see this icon too. Let’s hope Eir/Gomo aren’t planning on removing 3G support any time soon like Verizon in the US is. Reception can be patchy in many parts of the country.

The devastating effects of Storm Eunice

The west coast of Ireland woke up to severe winds this morning as Storm Eunice hit the country. After a lull at 7am wind speeds picked up again and the trees behind my home were swaying alarmingly. Three roads out of Blarney have been blocked by falling trees already. Some who believe the storm isn’t that serious have commented that many of those trees were old trees with pre-existing conditions and they were going to fall anyway.

Cork has been devastated by the storm. In the photo above you can see a poor cow that has been blown into a tree in Emmett Place near the Opera House. Emergency services will shortly be on the scene.

How will we survive at all?!

Storm Barra is upon us

Gusts of 130km/h were predicted and a gust of 156km/h was recorded off Fastnet Lighthouse but it’s not been too bad in Blarney yet. Fences are still standing and the wheelie bins are tucked away safe!

Cork Beo have live updates on their website as the City has all but shut down and the river has started to flood surrounding areas. It’s a good day to stay inside if you can!

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