The Night of the Big Wind (Irish: Oíche na Gaoithe Móire) was a hurricane which swept without warning across Ireland beginning in the afternoon of 6 January 1839, causing severe damage to property and several hundred deaths; 20% to 25% of houses in north Dublin were damaged or destroyed, and 42 ships were wrecked. The storm attained a very low barometric pressure of 918 hectopascals (27.1 inHg) and tracked eastwards to the north of Ireland, bringing winds gusts of over 100 knots (185 km/h, 115 mph) to the south before moving across the north of England and onto the European continent where it eventually died out. At the time, it was the most damaging Irish storm for 300 years.
Read more about Night Of The Big Wind: Meteorological Situation, Damage, Legacy, Related Writing
Famous quotes containing the words night, big and/or wind:
“You sold Marmaros to the Russians. Scurried away in the night and left us to die. Is it to be wondered at that you should choose this place to build your house? The masterpiece of construction, built upon the masterpiece of destruction, the masterpiece of murder. The murderer of ten thousand men returns to the place of his crime.”
—Peter Ruric, and Edgar G. Ulmer. Edgar G. Ulmer. Dr. Vitus Werdegast (Bela Lugosi)
“The big toad sits in my writing room
preventing me from writing. I am a flower
who dries out under her hot breath.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“The Republican Party does not perceive how many his failure will make to vote more correctly than they would have them. They have counted the votes of Pennsylvania & Co., but they have not correctly counted Captain Brown’s vote. He has taken the wind out of their sails,—the little wind they had,—and they may as well lie to and repair.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)