Waterford's Wintry Weather

We often say that in Ireland we have four seasons - thing is they can sometimes all arrive on the same day! This time of year is probably the most changeable and while we are officially in Spring - St. Brigid's Day on February 1st marking the traditional start of the Irish "spring" - we have had floods and snow in the past week.

These photos show the garden and our house in the snow - a rare sight!

I thought I would share some photos of my locality with you, which show the extremes of the weather patterns in this country and how we are totally obsessed with weather. We don't get proper winters; snow that actually lasts and that you could do something with, like skiing or tobogganing; and we don't get it cold enough to skate, like they do in Holland (where my husband comes from) with their tradition of the Elfstedentocht, or the 11 towns race, where skaters follow a cross-country course over canals and lakes, in Friesland in the north. It only happens sporadically when there is a really hard freeze, but at least it happens.

This shows the same view of Lismore Castle in flood and snow!

Here in Ireland the country shuts down when there is a snowfall for a day or so, the roads can't handle the traffic, and in Britain it is the same. Right now there are news headlines that Britain is running out of road grit for de-icing the roads, and it is causing chaos. What would we do if there was weather like in the movie Fargo, which I loved, where everything is engulfed in a white blizzard wilderness.

A mountain stream in flood

I went to Dublin last weekend for a meeting, and it was raining torrentially for the duration of the trip which is 130 miles or so, taking about 3 hours on our average roads. We don't have motorway all the way - Ireland is only just catching up on the rest of Europe where our road network is concerned - and a large part of the journey is on poor roads through towns and villages. The first 20 miles is across the Knockmealdown mountains (for those of you with Google Earth interest!) and it was pretty dodgy with so much flash flooding and runoff. The mountain streams turned into raging torrents and looked impressively dangerous.

I made it there and back safe and sound, and took some photos of our lovely castle and the River Blackwater in flood, with the flooded inches (the floodplain of the river) which always look spectacular, and on Monday awoke to snow! I took some photos as it is such a rare event it is worth recording.

So I hope you enjoy these snapshots of moments in an Irish winter. I promise you the summer views are even more beautiful, when everyplace is in full bloom - and I'll be back!

The photos show Lismore Castle and Inches in flood, which then froze over when it snowed a few days later.