FAIQ 21: Do You Have Snow in Ireland, Real Snow
Q. Do You Have Snow in Ireland, Real Snow
Short Answer: Yes (Scroll down for photo)
Longer Answer: Sometimes this Frequently Asked Irish Question is phrased “You Don’t Have Snow in Ireland, Not Really” and the question mark is left off leaving you unsure of how to answer.
For a couple of years I lived in Firhouse, in the southwest of Dublin, and at the time I worked deep in the heart of the southside (yuk) in Cabinteely. As this was before the southern section of the C-Ring M-50 was built, I had a few less obvious options to commute.
1. Walk 5 minutes. Take Bus across the the southside. Walk 25 mins Total journey 2.5 hours.
2. Walk 5 minutes. Take Bus to City Centre. Walk 5 minutes. Take Bus out to southside. Walk 5 minutes. Total journey 2 hours.
3. Walk 10 minutes. Get lift past Lamb Doyle’s direct to work. Total journey 1 hour 15 minutes.
4. Cycle through southside door-to-door. Total journey 55 minutes
5. Walk 10 minutes. Get lift past Johnny Fox’s direct to work. Total journey 45 minutes.
The problem with the quickest option, number five, is that it wasn’t really direct at all. It added an extra four miles onto the journey for the priviledge of bouncing along a boggy twisting mountain road.
Great views, and you kept moving, however slow, but it always felt like this should not be a suburban commuting route - like you were doing something bad. There’s something wrong with how a city functions if its workers can reduce their commute by diverting into mountains. Within a year of first using that “quick” route, the mountains became over trafficked, and it was our fault.
The other big problem with commuting through the mountains was snow. When snow fell in Dublin, any snow, I didn’t get to see Johnny Fox’s.
You don’t get real snow, you just get a dusting. Sometimes, yes we do get just a dusting. And yes Dublin can be brought to a news-saturated standstill by a snowfall one third the volume of a snowfall in Connacht that doesn’t get any news coverage, but either way, Ireland does get snow.
I’ve made snowmen. I’ve thrown snowballs. I’ve sledded. In Ireland. In Dublin even. You can’t do that with a dusting.
And when I was fifteen, this happened:
This is the scene less than one minute walk from my front door, with two young gurriers (actually Brother the Younger and Sister the Younger) standing in an area that has been cleared. Nothing has been stacked up. That is how God, or whoever dropped snow that year, left it, in Dublin West.
See Also:
• What’s With You Irish And All This Guilt Stuff? (FAIQ #18)
• Talking Temperatures in Ireland and America
• How Do You Find America? (FAIQ #10)
• Building an Igloo in Kansas City
Eolaí gan Fhéile:
Hi there,
what year was this picture taken?? I remember snow like that once when I was a kid in Dublin, but I have no idea what year it was, and I am sure it only happened the once!
Hi Lorraine,
I believe that snow was the January of 1982 - I’ve read it lasted from the 8th to the 18th, and that fits in with what I remember as we struggled to get just basic stuff like milk and bread.
There was also an earlier big freeze, even more severe I believe - in 1963 - but that was before my time.
It snowed the night of the 5th Jan 1984 as I gave birth to my second son Bobby that night in the Coombe Hospital. When I woke up the next morning the snow was at my window sill and I was on the second floor. I could only see the tips of the top of the trees. It lasted about 2 weeks and we couldn’t get milk or bread anywhere. The big news was when a shop got a delivery and everyone would walk there and drag back what they could get.
Alibags, are you sure about that? I don’t remember any serious snow then, and snow that’d cover whole trees would surely have been memorable, to say the least. I’ve had a look at this site too, which records the weather at Dublin airport, and for 5 January 1984 it says the temperature was between 3.6 and 8 degrees, and that it rained. Unlike, say, the rather more dramatic January 1982 figures.
Or were you being sarcastic?
I remember this well, I was 8 yrs old. My Mum was heavily pregnant at the time and the local shopkeeper very kindly kept some bread and milk aside for my Mam whenever deliveries made it through She would sent it direct to our front door with whatever neighbour was passing by.