Some of the questions people asked before I left for Ireland were, “Where in Ireland are you living?” “What are you going to do there?” “What are some things you are looking forward to?” “What are some things you’re nervous about?” Notice, that nowhere in these frequently asked questions was, “What are you going to do if you get hit by a hurricane?” Now, obviously I was well aware of the outrageous amounts of rain and the wind in Ireland, but I was unaware that hurricanes happened here. In the build-up of the storm, it was discussed how Hurricane Ophelia was set to be one of the worst hurricanes to ever hit Ireland. With all of the tragedy and damage that hurricanes caused in the U.S. this year, it was nerve-wracking to hear the news of the approaching storm.
Fortunately, the storm wasn’t as destructive as it was touted to be. However, there was still quite a bit of damage. In Cork, one of the school’s gym that we played in had their entire roof ripped off. There were also plenty of trees down and power outages acrossed a lot of Ireland. However, lucky for us in Limerick, the storm didn’t hit us that hard. My family was checking on me quite a bit throughout the day, and each time they texted me I would look outside. “Yep, I’m fine. It’s sunny outside.” We experienced quite a bit of wind, but hardly any rain. If no one would’ve told me there was a hurricane, I would’ve thought it was just another day of Irish weather. It turned into a nice day off for me to stay inside all day and get caught up on some work.
So, I got to experience my first hurricane while in Ireland. This was a first that I didn’t expect to cross off, but I am just grateful that Limerick didn’t get hit that hard and that the storm wasn’t as devastating as initially predicted. The picture above was from my room during the hurricane.
