Historic Kilkenny weather events can be valuable windows into the past

I was struck recently by just how weather events can connect us with the past, and with people who we may never have even met.

This thought occurred to me last week when I stumbled across a post from the Kilkenny County Council Library Service.

One of the latest enquiries they recently received was in relation to the ‘Cloneen Cyclone’ from a local man who was sure that it appeared in a newspaper in the 1930s.

After some intense digging and detective work, the relevant article and a beautifully hand-written account of the storm was found.

The sources noted that on one evening in 1935, a heavy wind, or ‘fairy wind’ (as it is described in folklore accounts) passed through Cloneen, near Castlecomer.

It was so sudden and so powerful that it took the area by complete surprise, and caused immense extensive damage, lifting roofs from houses in the process.

But why was finding out about this storm so important to this man?

Well it transpired that his father-in-law and other relatives of his wife and neighbours had witnessed it.

The man had a photograph at home of some of those relatives pictured in Cloneen after the storm, surrounded by cottages that had been badly damaged.

That weather event, and finding out more about it, allowed him to feel closer to his relatives and their lives.

If it hadn’t happened, he probably would not have had that photo, and that connection would never have been made.

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This man's story resonated with me because something similar happened to me when I was researching my own family history.

I didn’t know a whole lot about my grandfather’s past when I started the research, but the fact that he lived on Green Street in Kilkenny City in the year 1947 proved to be pivotal.

Green Street is located on some of the most low-lying ground in Kilkenny City and its proximity to the River Nore made it a prime target for flooding over the years.

A combination of factors however, including a rapid late snow-melt, meant that the floods of March 1947 would forever go down in Kilkenny folklore.

In what sounds almost like a scene from a horror film, the Kilkenny People reported on that fateful day that: “In several houses in Green Street there were two feet of water in the upstairs bedrooms and at least one family had to be rescued through the roof of their dwelling.”

My grandfather Dan would’ve been only 18 at the time, and it must have been terrifying.

As a result of the flooding, he and many others were rehoused in The Married Quarters section of James Stephens Military Barracks.

For me, being able to read primary source accounts of an event that my grandfather experienced himself was truly the highlight of that research.

Both my story and the story of the man who went to the library shows the value of documenting weather events in as much detail as possible.

These events, even if they seem innocuous, can serve as invaluable windows to the past and provide incredible insight about the people they affected.

Just as the weather connects us all, we are also connected to it, through time and generations.

In sharing weather stories, we’re sharing more than just facts about storms or floods.

We are passing down family history, community memory and personal connections.

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