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:
“Have We not made the earth as a cradle and the mountains as pegs? And We created you in pairs, and We appointed your sleep for a rest; and We appointed night for a garment, and We appointed day for a livelihood. And We have built above you seven strong ones, and We appointed a blazing lamp and have sent down out of the rain-clouds water cascading that We may bring forth thereby grain and plants, and gardens luxuriant.”
—Qur’An. “The Tiding,” 78:6-16, trans. by Arthur J. Arberry (1955)
“The true gardener then brushes over the ground with slow and gentle hand, to liberate a space for breath round some favourite; but he is not thinking about destruction except incidentally. It is only the amateur like myself who becomes obsessed and rejoices with a sadistic pleasure in weeds that are big and bad enough to pull, and at last, almost forgetting the flowers altogether, turns into a Reformer.”
—Freya Stark (1893–1993)
“the wind came out of the cloud chilling
And killing my Annabel Lee.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)