Storm Eowyn

I’m selling a house this week. Well I was.

It's an old property from the 1880s and recently we have opened up the space at the lower roof area so there's a view of the sky. The garden is now part of the property and we have allowed the "living space to flow from dining room to the kitchen to the garden and the water features beyond." 

We have called this new area the arborium and it has extra features of air conditioning and automatic watering of any of the plant features inside and adjacent to the arborium area.

It's a lovely property, pitch pine fireplaces, corniced ceilings and a bell for ringing the servants.

Do you fancy it?

That was my spin on the fact that a tree came through the roof in the storm. 

That was just to prove that estate agents can spin anything. 

I do slightly curse my luck that, with a view to selling the house, we had an estimate to cut down three of the big trees and they were due to come down at the end of February. Storm Eowyn had other ideas. That’s why there was no blog last week 'My Lord.'  There was a lack of electricity and a lack of cohesive thought processes during the once in a lifetime event.

                                            

                                                                      Ouch!

 It was the first time that the Red Alert had gone off on everybody's phone. I landed at Glasgow Airport on the Thursday night, the plane slid along sideways aiming roughly for the runway. The minute the seatbelt sign was off, all the passengers put their airplane mode off on their phones and 200  threat to life alerts went off at the one time.

Imagine the worst tinnitus ever.

                                       

The taxi driver said that the airport was closing at 5am . Three Ryanair flights left mainland Spain in the small hours of the morning knowing they had nowhere to land. One went to Stansted (London), one to Poland and one to Germany, then presumably headed back to Edinburgh.

Here's a clip of Scotland's finest. 

Watch as tree almost falls on police officers in Glasgow amid Storm Eowyn damage | STV News

The taxi driver was interesting. He was going to work through the storm as all public transport was going off at 9 am. Essential workers had no way of getting to work, so taxi's would be in demand, doing multiple pick ups. Workers had been advised to get into their place of work before 9 am, and stay there until it was safe to go home. The red alert was lifted  in the early evening.

There were bursts of winds in excess of 110 mph, which is nothing compared to the weather that hits parts of the US on a regular basis, but we are so unprepared.  Our ground is sodden, the trees couldn't hold on. The local golf course lost 60 trees.

It was a mercy that only two lives were lost- both young men, in their cars driving to get to a safer place and  the vehicle impacting a tree.

That was the first red alert. Everywhere closed, stay indoors, do not go out under any circumstances.  With typical humour,  it was quickly said  there were four stages of the storm- yellow, amber, red alert and then 'oh no, Greggs is closed'.

During the storm, the noise was unbelievable. We were upstairs, watching the three trees known as The Three Amigos. They stood up to the threat but lost branches that fell and got caught in lower branches  and, as I write this, they are still hanging precariously over the road, awaiting the attention of the tree surgeon.

A tree through the roof is obviously an issue. There's broken tiles and all kinds of things.... and then, as the builder pointed out the roof has sagged under the pressure ( don't we all!).

With all that going on, the ideas for crime fiction came thick and fast. People being stuck at home. Lots of premises empty. Dogs were relocated away from the eye of the storm. No electricity. No internet. And, maybe easy access to property with holes being made here, there and everywhere.

The first question the insurance company asked was 'Was anybody hurt?' And the answer to that is thankfully no. 

And it's pronounced ay  oh win. Seemingly.

Snippets from Wikipedia -

"Storm Éowyn was an extremely powerful and record-breaking extratropical cyclone which hit Ireland, the Isle of Man and the United Kingdom on 24 January 2025 and Norway on the night of 24 January into 25 January 2025. Eowyn was named by the UK Met Office on 21 January 2025.

Widespread red weather warnings were issued across Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man, whilst amber and yellow warnings were issued around Wales, England and Norway ahead of the rapidly strengthening storm. It was the most powerful and severe to hit Ireland since Hurricane Debbie in 1961, with wind records breaking an 80-year-old record for the country.

On 21 January 2025, the UK Met Office and associated organisations in Europe used the name "Éowyn" for the fifth storm of the 2024–2025 season. Éowyn is a fictional character in J. R. R. Tolkien's novel The Lord of the Rings and the name was taken from a list based on suggestions by the public.

The storm was fuelled by a strong jet stream and energy from the January 20–22, 2025 Gulf Coast blizzard, which brought significant snow to the Gulf Coast of the United States."

For now? Bitter cold, blue skies and no rain.

Which is just as well as we do have a hole in the roof!  And we are looking into it.

C