What’s in a name? This name.

Darragh.

The seven letters which gave this Storm its identity. Perhaps reflected its massive personality. Chosen long before the computer models showed something brewing out in the Atlantic. And eventually barrelling towards Ireland, with wind gusts strengthening as it did – and it’s always worth focusing on these gust strengths when reading the wonderful Ventusky maps, favoured by yachtsmen worldwide for their detail. Those occasional insane super-strong arrowed bursts which would cause the real damage as the wind direction shifted gradually from West to North West.

How ironic that this Irish origin name, (apparently from the Old Irish word daire) means oak. The Welsh name for oak is derwen.  That centuries old, strong-timbered tree, with its majestic domed canopy, ending in finely branched irregular twigs. A potential home to a colossal 2,300 different species. So common in the old woods around here, and sometimes surfacing from the depths of our valley bottom peat seams as bog-preserved, very ancient, black limbs. (In the days when I worked wood, in December 2007, the piece below was inspired by splitting Hamamelis seed capsules and I called it ‘Decay and Dispersal’. It used spalted -fungally affected – hazel and ebony black bog oak from our wet valley bottom field. The lower split wasn’t intended, but occurred as I retreated to bed with pneumonia over Christmas that year, and the hazel dried out too fast!) So maybe an appropriate name and identity for this outburst of immense natural violence.

In hidden away wet pockets of boggy terrain across this country, where chainsaws might never reach their fallen boughs, perhaps Darragh will be the initiator of a new crop of bog oak which will only re-surface many millennia from now.

Now there’s a thought.

Darragh. Approaching on Friday.

How does one describe a Storm’s severity, its dimensions?

Having experienced Darragh, it’s surely worthy of some sort of footnote in local history. I met our neighbour Glyn today for the first time since Darragh blasted past. He’s lived in the valley all his life. He can’t recall any storm as severe in over 80 years, and indeed it was he who told me about the downing of many of the majestic ancient beeches at Caermalwas Fach, (sadly I can’t get a good translation for this property name. Caer = fort/ress, fach = little, but the malwas section has me stumped!) which had inspired me to write the first lines of my poem ‘Dream Leaper’ in November 2020:

We visited the scene today in a rare brighter moment, and I was almost moved to tears, to see these felled giants, like whales in Wales. Flattened, beached, and destined to slowly die. It would be a massive task to clear this debris, beyond the ability of most landowners, so perhaps they’ll linger for a long time. Much of the nearby land is now owned by the local Wildlife Trust who are no doubt always stretched for funds. The trees seemed so much bigger, smashed and stretched out down the hill, than they did when we cycled beneath them 3 years ago and I took the first photo, below.

So I think Darragh should linger in our consciousness as more than simply a centrally logged Grade 1 Storm. Which is how the National Grid eventually categorised it, and which we then discovered has considerable financial significance. Many friends and family in other parts of the UK had no idea of its local severity – it didn’t seem to merit significant news coverage across much of Britain.

Many such casualties of its aftermath will surely linger around here beyond our time in the landscape.

This blog post attempts to map Darragh’s dimensions, in an inevitably personal way. But then I guess that’s always how someone’s history, or maybe obituary, gets written. And by giving it a human name, as well as a nod to a majestic tree, the King of the Forest, with a significant role in the Welsh Mabinogion tale, it surely has to be someone’s, and not something‘s, story.

We were lucky. I guess Wales was lucky. Given that at one time, over 700,000 of its roughly 3 million inhabitants were without power after Darragh blasted the Western half of this nation, it was remarkable that there was no resulting loss of human life or indeed serious injury across this land. The landscape wasn’t so lucky. In places there was lots of evidence of destruction and death. Large hill top plantations decimated. It’s very difficult to capture this with small photographs – the sheer scale of the damage.

Much of the following report is influenced by handwritten notes scribbled out in long evenings by the light of a dim LED Beanie. Or even an ancient Draper wind-up head torch when the battery powered ones ran out, sitting in our fortunately cosy Morsø-heated long room. I’ve only been able to begin to type this out over the last couple of days, for reasons that will become clear. But perhaps I should have had an inkling that something special was brewing on the morning of Friday December 6th.

I’d gone out early, and grabbed my black puffer coat, but otherwise just wearing nightshirt, pullover, long johns and wellies. I stood above the house with the camera on a tripod to watch what looked like it might be a promising sunrise’s slow burn double colour phases. I did come in at one point to make another hot drink for us both, but otherwise spent around 90 minutes outside, just standing, watching, thinking and taking photos intermittently as the scene evolved completely unpredictably as all great sunrises do around here. There was little wind.

I was, unusually, outside before even the first blackbirds got moving. One pinked and flew so close behind my head that I could clearly hear its wing beats through my Beanie and hood. Later a buzzard glided West. Jets arrowed East.

I watched three small dark-fingered linear clouds gradually build over the hill towards Llansawel, then grow extra fingers before slowly drifting North East. Maybe a hair comb would be a better description, but sometimes pictures are clearer than attempts at descriptive words Soon the clouds were replaced by more, almost identical dark-fingered cousins arising from clear air at exactly the same point above the hill. What was so special about atmospheric conditions, just here, hundreds of metres above the ground?

Later as we moved into the second wave of colour changes before the sun rose above the horizon, a very diffuse, pale rose-pink wash appeared as an overlay to the more typical sunrise colours, and then gradually faded. But only over sections of the sky towards Llansawel valley. Almost like a faint aurora-type effect.

Red sky at night, shepherd’s’ delight.
Red sky at morning, shepherd’s take warning

(If morning skies glow pink-red, it often signifies a high-pressure air mass with stable air trapping particles, like dust, which scatters the sun’s blue light. This high pressure zone then moves east, and a low-pressure system often follows behind from the west, bringing wind or rain or both).

I was waiting for signs of a starling flock flying East, and eventually spotted one, really high up, above the village in the valley’s bottom. I came inside and mentioned to Fiona that 90 minutes of entertainment these days could cost people serious money.  But then, how many would have been happy to stand in one spot on an early December morning, for this length of time just watching a sunrise? Just watching and thinking. Perhaps it’s as well it’s not a mass market interest, perhaps it’s as well so few are fascinated by such natural drawn-out events.

Clearly that Friday, December 6th had already made an impact on me. A special unusual morning for December, not least because I’d lasted this long outside without suffering any significant chilling down. And partly because I knew from the forecasts that Saturday would be a windy washout. I’d charged up all our torches, Beanie lights, and Li-ion batteries. And got the chainsaw teeth sharpened in advance of likely use. Made sure the log baskets were all full, and that there was nothing left around which could be blown away. My usual pre-storm mental check list of things to be done, from many years of experience. I finished the day with lifting and potting up a few named snowdrops for next season’s garden opening.

Part of the good fortune and lack of human fatalities was undoubtedly because of the decision taken around 7pm on that Friday evening by the Welsh First Minister, to issue a dramatic loud alarm sound to all Smartphone owners. Linked to a text message warning people not to travel the following day, due to likely damage from Darragh’s high winds. (There’s a lot of interesting detail in the government’s statement about the impact of Darragh, here, which I only read about days later. The debate took place 2 days before our power came back on, and thus highlights that our community was one of the very last places to have power supplies restored.)

Needless to say, since my 2G phone still has no local connectivity, I didn’t receive this dramatic alert, but it made Fiona jump. However, I’d noticed that the Met Office email updates I subscribe to had already alerted me around the same time that the warnings about the fast-approaching storm had been upgraded from amber, to red, the highest risk. I can’t remember whether, in the 9 years since the Met Office decided to name storms, we’ve ever had a red alert here before. But it had the desired effect. We cancelled a planned lunch with friends for the following day, which was around the time that Darragh’s strongest winds were forecast to hit us.

Although 32mm of rain fell overnight – modest compared to recent Storm Bert’s deluge, the morning was again briefly a bright affair. But the winds were what had worried me as I’d looked at Ventusky’s predictions – gusts of up to 82 mph, building in intensity from 3am, before gradually calming down after midday. We’d lived through serious winds many years ago in Bristol during the Burns Day Storm, when flying slates and toppled chimney pots, which wrecked our recently re-slated roof, meant we stayed indoors whilst the storm blew through. There was indeed significant local property damage, and loss of life across the UK and Europe during that storm, but we seemed to carry on as before once the storm had blown through. Possibly because power outages were limited, and we were living in an urban environment. Possibly because all the building damage was resolved by others, and the tab picked up by our home insurance policy.

An early morning check showed there was a fair bit of branch debris from the oak and larch in the track and yard, which Fiona set to clearing up, whilst I did a quick check of damage further from the house, and fired up both chainsaws for the first time.

As winds picked up through the day and things clouded over on Saturday 7th we stayed inside, with me occasionally popping my head outside to hear the roar of the winds in the trees on the hill across the valley. However, once again, Gelli seemed to have been well-sited, dug into the East facing flank of the hillside. It felt surprisingly un-dramatic on our side of the valley, so just before lunch I’d done a quick walk around to see how the buildings, nearby trees and bee hives had fared. I walked down to check the sheep who I’d moved into a field away from both the stream and the tallest trees beyond it, the day before.

All were fine, although I had to tidy up and weight down some blown about tarpaulins and empty big bags. Walking down to the stream I saw a woodcock flying North into the teeth of the gale, but hugging the line of the stream, with its overhanging branches for maximum protection. Amazing strength and agility in such conditions – try doing that with a mechanical drone, and it would be smashed to pieces in no time.

We’d had the occasional flicker of lights through the morning, but then around lunchtime the power went down, which frankly was no surprise. I had my customary post prandial short zizz, and as I lay on the bed I couldn’t ignore the evidence that some gusts now seemed stronger than during the morning. The house occasionally seemed to shake. But there were no obvious crashes, so just before dusk fell, I ventured out once more. Our terracotta bird bath, which featured in a recent post had, I noticed, been physically lifted off its short feet and moved 6 inches to one side. Lucky escape, I thought, and brought it inside.

Not so lucky was our lovely Bristol blue glass bowl, which has for many years had a Sarracenia pitcher plant resting in it. It lay on the gravel beneath our metal table, with the plant resting on its side beyond it. Yet, miraculously, as I knelt down to retrieve it, I discovered it appeared intact without even a chip despite a fall of nearly a metre. Even more wonderful, as I straightened up holding the bowl, a huge starling flock nearly brushed my head, as it swept up over the low ha-ha wall from cae efail to the East, on towards the house, and up and over the slated roof, directly into the teeth of the wind. Before wheeling and peeling, and almost gybing through ninety degrees, and heading up over the upper hay meadow towards their distant Llanllwni mountain roost. Needless to say, I couldn’t hear any of the customary whoosh of wings as they passed through, the ambient noise was so loud. But as with the woodcock, it impressed me how such small birds are capable of still flying with exquisite precision in such extreme conditions. The bowl is now back in place.

By now, I’d noticed that many of the surrounding hills’ copses had significant gaps in the tree line. Frankly what we’d expected on the hill tops most exposed to the gales. As dusk fell, and with the wind a little less severe, I climbed up to the Shepherd’s Hut, and sat against the tied together doors on the sleeper steps, watching the light fade from the greying sky and landscape. Roars still came from the trees across the valley, and occasionally a strong gust rocked the Hut behind me. But it seemed to have survived the ordeal intact. For the first time in all our years here, as far as my eye could see, in every direction, the landscape was dark. No lights twinkled, save a very occasional car that passed along the road. Alhough static headlights were obvious along the back lane to Esgairdawe, which moved off and returned after a while – almost certainly someone clearing a fallen tree using the vehicle lights as illumination, I guessed.

With that we hunkered down for a long evening. Fiona had, by now, received a first update from National Grid explaining that they hoped to have our power back by midnight. With no power, and hence internet, we were surprised that they were so optimistic, but heck, they would be in the best position to assess the scale of the problems, we thought. Her patchy mobile signal now only worked in one window of the house.

Sunday dawned with another lovely sunrise, still more strong gusts, and not surprisingly still no power. Temperatures had dropped a bit more, but thanks to keeping the Morsø ‘Dove’ wood burning stove going overnight, at least half of the house was really snug. By now National Grid had pushed back our power-back-on time to Sunday evening, and Fiona had lost her mobile signal completely. I’d begun the process of chain sawing up perhaps the dozen trees or large branches which had either fallen into the stream, or were lying on our fences. I still haven’t made it up into the copse beyond the stream which is a scene of as much damage as was wrought by Storm Arwen in December 2021.

Many of the fallen trees and branches are very challenging, since one has to cope with how the trees had fallen, and in the case of those on the bank to the North of the house, two had been blown over, and in so doing snapped off a third trunk. If taking them out in a planned way, I’d have felled them into the field. As it is, I’m having to nibble away at them, on a very awkward slope, and risk chain traps as the weight of trunk slips backwards rather than simply falling lower. They were planted as seedlings by us, maybe 29 years ago, to protect the property from winds from the North. So I suppose they accomplished that, though we never anticipated they’d ever be blown over like this.

After Fiona walked down the track to check for more fallen trees or branches, she met our neighbour returning from a long trip to source fuel for a generator. He told her the road in the village was blocked by 2 fallen trees, as was the road over the mountain. Later she heard from others that the road through the valley to Llansawel was a real mess, and that the circular walk through the forest had taken them about 3 hours, rather than the normal 1 hour due to huge numbers of enormous felled trees. The foresters cottage beyond Abernant had been effectively cut off.

By Sunday evening, our last remaining means of communication – the landline – went down as well.

I had an inkling that another over optimistic deadline for re-connection would shortly be missed. It was, and by Monday morning, the new re-connection target was Tuesday evening. More chain sawing for me in the morning, and shifting the sheep back into the top hay meadow which also now had a large, ivy-covered dead ash tree lying in it. The sheep spotted an opportunity and descended on it. Clearly they hadn’t heard that ivy was poisonous, and ignoring the berries, within a couple of days they’d stripped it bare. They were also quickly onto all the shoot tips of willow and hazel branches which fell within their reach after I’d logged the branches.

A trip out for the postponed lunch gave hints of more tree damage along the way, but the landscape around Lampeter itself, 20 minutes away, seemed remarkably unscathed. I should add that by now an unexpected consequence of two days without power, and communications was that we were both more than a little tired and scratchy. We’d still enjoyed hot baths – the immersion tank ran out of hot water on Monday evening. Although we could cook simple hot food on the wood burner, the lack of light, challenge of getting properly boiling water for a morning cuppa, and finding I was getting up in the early hours to stoke the fire was becoming tiring on top of far more chainsaw work than I’d normally complete in a single day.

This set the pattern for the next 2 days. More chain sawing and tidying up. More disturbed nights, switching to boiling our 3 kettles at a time, repeatedly through the afternoon and lugging them upstairs to eventually having enough warm water for a very shallow early evening bath. By Tuesday I’d dug out our Kelly kettle, which meant that by using hot water from a flask filled the night before from kettles on the wood burner, I could rustle up a properly hot morning cup of tea by 6.15 with the minimum of fuss. Bliss! Really quick boiling water from just a few dry twigs, scraps of paper and a match, though it would have been much more challenging in wind or rain. 

Even if it then meant returning to bed and sitting there sipping our tea in darkness so complete you couldn’t even see fingers in front of your face – one soon realises that however many charged up torches and beanie lights on has, they soon run out in the 16 hour nights that we get at this time of the year. Every bit of light seemed very precious. Still, at least my re-training in recent months to be able to walk upstairs with my eyes shut carrying 2 hot drinks, now proved to be invaluable.

There’s no question that we were also incredibly fortunate to enjoy dry conditions and largely light wind days after Sunday. And that although temperatures fell to about 2 degrees C, we avoided both frosts and snow. This also helped the brilliant engineers who were working tirelessly to sort out the damage to both electricity and cable networks which had taken a battering.

Wednesday brought another bit of a downer, when I walked to the end of the tyre garden and noticed trashed handrails and a huge pile of broken rambling rose stem debris beneath the hawthorn. I then glanced down and spotted that the Swedish butter churn hive, which was occupied by the swarm of honey bees we’d memorably watched arrive at breakfast time, back in May, had been completely trashed. The top box was down the hill, the insulated butter churn main box was minus any top lid, on its side and wedged behind one of our Iarge water backup IBC tanks. It must have happened late on Saturday, after I’d checked all the colonies, and I hadn’t walked this way since. 4 nights open to the air with rain and near freezing temperatures. Despite it being, in my opinion, the most sheltered of all the colonies. No bees were evident, and I spotted this just before I was due out for our next A.G.O.G. meeting so arrived a little bit below par – tired and despondent.

On Thursday, once Fiona’s mobile signal had returned, albeit weakly, and the re-connection time had been pushed back again to Thursday evening, we thought we should head out and survey the scene ourselves along the road to Llansawel.

The photos don’t really do justice to the extent of the damage, but the very strange feature was just how much there was in this deep cut, twisting valley, while trees higher up the hillside were spared. We assume the wind must have been funneled through, and possibly speeded up as a consequence at the very base of the zig zag valley you can see in the mid-distance of the photos above. Notice how few trees seem damaged on the hillsides, higher up. All of the photos below were taken from along this valley’s base, where the road to Llansawel runs.

On the very quiet road, at one of our stopping points, we were greeted by Charlie from Hafod mountain bike trails. She filled us in on the situation – their power supply had been restored that morning. The day after the storm blew through they’d had to use their own digger to remove around 25 trees/branches blocking the perhaps mile and a half of road between Abernant and where the valley opens out before Llansawel. She told us that the issue for Rhydcymerau’s supply was that the power cable pole and transformer near the forester’s cottage had been completely destroyed. This was now the focus of the engineers’ attention, and once sorted, our supply should be restored. She reckoned that even with their own digger, they probably had about 6 weeks of work ahead of them clearing and processing all the fallen trees on their property.

We headed back, and parked at Abernant’s entrance just in time to see the cavalry in the form of a National Grid low loader sweep into the forest’s entrance, complete with Digger, augur, single supply pole and new transformer.  With no hanging around he immediately began reversing up the narrow half mile forestry track to the cottage.

The mature forest on the hill behind him was completely devastated.

We headed home a little more optimistic that the immediate ordeal was nearing an end, and sure enough, by 3pm a light came on, and phones beeped. ‘Normality’ was beginning to return. I’d already asked Fiona what she’d look forward to most, once the power returned – a decent hot bath she reckoned. For me, it was sitting down and listening to some music on the hi-fi. Thank goodness I’d begun to fiddle around playing the piano a little in the month before Darragh struck. It was a huge boost to be able to sit in near darkness and still have at least some music in our big room.

Yesterday, just before lunch I was lifting some more snowdrops. Quite a few flowers were properly open, and since the very first Daphne bholua flowers are also now open, I wondered if I’d see or hear any honey bees out and about. I wandered on and glanced at the still dishevelled Swedish butter churn hive which I thought I’d better tidy up after lunch, only to see few bees flying around it. Much to my amazement, the colony was still alive! What an idiot I’d been not to check it out sooner.

Quickly, I donned my bee suit and approached from the steep steps down to the toppled base. Once I’d cleared the tall stand and pulled it upright, I could properly see the main hive box. Which had been blown over a netting fence with barbed wire top and was lying on its side, with the top bars of my home made frames still in place and still in a vertical orientation, just rotated through 90 degrees.

As more bees came into view, I realised this wouldn’t be easy or pleasant, but I just had to go for it. One of the benefits of a past career as a vet is knowing that there are occasional situations where heroic speed is needed, and not prevarication. This was definitely one of them. Straddling the barbed wire, I could just about grab the box, and heave it up and over the barbed wire, and with a brief rest on the front of the stand, then hoik it back into its correct position and orientation. I could see large numbers of bees emerging onto the top bars, and into the air around me, and the gloves and arms of the suit were attracting a lot of attention. Talk about traumatised honey bees – first having their colony ripped from position and crashing to the ground in a violent storm. Next hanging on in the cold for 9 days, only for their colony then to be violently manhandled once more by this threatening ogre.

For the very first time in my experience, I was aware of being enveloped by the scent of honey bee anger and alarm. It was indeed reminiscent, briefly, of ripe bananas and it’s the result of a complex mix of chemicals released by specialised Koschevnikov glands close to the sting. Other bees rapidly respond to this alarm pheromone and will speedily join in the attack on the threatening animal. I retreated, covered in bees, but had to return almost immediately with the top box, when I got a second wave of interest – by now my bee suit was inevitably covered in a number of stings. Will the colony survive all this? Time will tell, but for now we’re going to give them a wide berth. They’ll be in a heightened state of alert for a few more days, and it didn’t help that all of this palava took place on the day of a full moon, when I’ve often found that hives are at their most angsty or unpredictable. I made a final trip back around dusk to replace the insulated and waterproofing upper layers, once all the bees had returned inside.

I have no excuses for the lapse of common sense in not actually checking them out before. Or indeed ensuring that this box was stable enough to survive such a storm. Force of nature will have a new meaning for us in the future. As indeed it will for the 3 traumatised horses we heard about, who having just been housed into a new stable block North of Lampeter, had it literally blown away from over their heads.

One of my favourite Mike and The Mechanics tracks is ‘Mea Culpa’. I’m guessing the honey bees would hate its rhythmic, repeated bass line. Interesting lyrics too, but to the bees I sincerely say, mea culpa. Sung powerfully on this live recording by the late Paul Young. From the excellent album ‘Beggar on a Beach of Gold’. Full of wonderful tunes and lyrics, and indeed an eventual Gold selling album in the UK, released in 1995.

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The first of many actions following our own post storm analysis came a couple of days ago when we installed a Starlink satellite internet system. We’re not alone. EE have lost many local customers, fed up by the degraded service over many weeks now, with no apparent resolution in prospect, and a dreadful lack of interest from the company. Years ago I sank and subsequently lost a significant amount into shares of the British satellite company, Avanti, which was then quoted on the AIM market.

I discovered to my surprise today, that it still exists in spite of delisting in 2019, which meant my shares became untradeable and worthless. Intelligent investors, or those in the know, would have bailed out way sooner – sadly, I don’t fall into that category. In contrast to most British pension funds (private or public) who typically have less than 4% of their funds (which probably means any pension fund which you might have an interest in) invested in our own country’s businesses. My own tally seems to be nearer 40%. The global average for pension funds is more like 10% invested in their home business shares. What a shocking lack of endorsement of our own country’s businesses by our big pension funds. Although to be fair to the pension funds, it’s in big part driven by crazy central government and Bank of England rules forcing them to invest in other ‘safer’ assets. Like what?

Well, like buying UK government debt through state interest paying bonds (gilts). Safe as houses? Backing the UK government? I’ll let you decide. You could argue from my experience with Avanti, that indeed they are safer. But I’d rather try to support potentially wealth generating businesses, rather than a ravenous wealth devouring state.

Avanti had plans to offer satellite internet to more remote parts of the world, particularly Africa. They never got beyond 3 satellites launches I think, in several years, and I assumed they’d gone bust, but just discovered they’re still a going business, with a snazzy website. What’s even worse is that it’s clear that EE partners with the remaining, de-listed Avanti to support their remote rural system of masts which is where, presumably, our own (degraded) internet, my non existent mobile service, and Fiona’s degraded mobile service is coming from. To quote from their website, today:

Powering the UK’s emergency services with EE
EE partners with Avanti to provide Satellite Cellular Backhaul to over 1,000 fixed and portable base stations across the UK. EE uses bandwidth from Avanti’s Ka-band satellites that connects all EE LTE sites across the country.

Avanti’s satellite cellular backhaul helps EE reach more remote and rural areas of the country, whilst simultaneously boosting the resilience of the network. (sic- my emphasis)

“The performance, reliability and versatility we get from satellite is really key for us. It has been part of our design and rollout of our network and how we actually operate the network in life.”

Richard Harrap, Managing Director of Emergency Services Network.

Resilient network, eh, Richard? I’d question that from local customers’ experience over recent months.

Interestingly, there’s no hint at who, privately, actually owns the Avanti business now. Is anyone actually making some money out of it? Maybe not. I wouldn’t want to compete in ANY space with Mr. Musk. But certainly the poor old original investors, who stuck with the company to the end, lost out big time. Stick with EE in the long term after just discovering this hook up with Avanti? I don’t think so, on principle.

So, for those in the UK who can’t stand Elon Musk, and I know that there are many, I’d say in our defence I actively try to support British businesses with not just our custom, but direct investment, on a few rare occasions like this. Most of my punts have been complete, wipe-out disasters. Whatever you think of Musk, his technological achievements are amazing – we got the system up and running out of the boxes, in a morning, and the speed of service far exceeds anything we’ve ever had from EE.

Compare and contrast this with our original satellite dish installation from many years ago, which was professionally installed. Eventually. Using a company called ‘Beyond SL’ as network provider. It took the installer several days to finish the job, and must have gone in before I started my blog. It was considerably more fickle to align the dish accurately enough for it to work. On more than one occasion we had to call an engineer back at our expense to re-align it. I’m not even sure if I’ll need to de-ice the Starlink dish, since it apparently works with inches of snow on it, and anyway seems to have some current flowing through it which may help to prevent snow build up.

(From 2013 – it looks like my same black puffer jacket!).

I read yesterday that Musk is hoping to offer satellite phone services to rural areas of the UK, perhaps from the end of next year. If I were BT/EE I’d be worried. We’d be amongst the first to sign up. We’ve thought for ages that above ground cabled services in terrain like this are hugely vulnerable to such storms.

Beyond all of this, we now know that National Grid have a ‘guaranteed standards requirement’, as laid down by OFGEM, for compensation to be paid out after over 48 hours of power interruption. So that after any future major storm event like Darragh, it’ll be a straightforward numbers game for National Grid. And actually quite an interesting logistical challenge for the company. Go first for the fixes which will get the power back on to the most properties as soon as possible. Whilst inevitably the most difficult to access problems, or those with fewest dependent properties will always lie at the bottom of the list. There can be no other rational way to approach such a challenge. Even if, as in our case, engineers were shipped in from much further afield to help with the gargantuan task. So for as long as we live here, in a more remote, less densely populated area, it makes sense to plan ahead for a repeat, or possibly even worse outage incident.

Extra lights and mini-charger/inverters are being explored, as well as a possible larger battery powered, but portable inverter. These are all heavy and expensive for a really quite small storage capacity. A portable system based on Lithium ferrous phosphate batteries could always be taken off site and recharged elsewhere in an extended power outage like this. Maybe in due course recharged from a 12 V output from a hybrid car battery. Sadly, extra independent-of-the-grid solar panels would be completely inadequate to recharge batteries at this time of the year. And for anyone who doesn’t have PV solar panels, I should explain that they are automatically shut down, if the power goes off, to prevent any electricity from them going back into a network that engineers might be working on. This could probably be circumvented now with additional switches, or wiring circuits, but would be quite expensive too.

One of my biggest frustrations after this event, when missing out on adequate light during long nights was a big issue, is that we had lots of small Makita and Bosch fully charged Li-ion batteries, but no light to run with them. Strangely neither company seems to make appropriate emergency lighting which will run off them. I ordered what looked like a good Bosch LED floodlight, after the event, only to discover that it didn’t work with either of the sizes of Bosch battery that we own. So had to send it back. Shucks.

(For those who wonder why there’s no mention of candle use during this power outage, there is a reason. Since I have a potential for lung problems, we ditched them years ago, after I’d discovered the huge quantity of very fine soot particles that they push into the atmosphere – illustrated and written up in this blog post).

I’m not keen on a fuel driven generator. I owned one in my moth trapping days, and it’s always a problem getting such equipment to work when needed if it’s only very rarely wheeled out. Plus it’s nearly as heavy as a battery inverter and obviously has to stay outside when in use and the power output cabled inside – not easy in wintry, windy or wet conditions.

Frozen food can always be relocated to friends, if one knows the outage is likely to run into days. Having our main freezer in an outbuilding proved to be an advantage since we could leave the doors to the barn open and with the ambient temperature only just above freezing, much of the food survived in a frozen state for the whole of the multi-day outage.

However, having tried to touch on the various dimensions to Storm Darragh, my most abiding memories are that such natural events of monumental force are completely outside our normal comprehension. They’ll strike with minimal notice. And we’re entirely impotent early on in our ability to respond to them personally, or of course control their impact in any way, as they’re evolving.

Luck, or fate plays a big part in survival or destruction. And even time of the year. Simply being in the wrong place, and getting hit by the strongest or most turbulent gusts – and clearly moving isn’t an option for many beings or structures. Very few of the dying ash trees seemed to have be blown down, yet those iconic beeches, which had lost all their leaves, were toppled like ninepins.

Moreover, we aree still a very poorly resilient species, for all our brain power and technology. We’ve become very dependent on modern fixes and solutions to problems, and can only marvel at how simpler creatures cope with such extreme natural onslaughts.

We’re possibly also all far too dependent now on electronic devices, and if we really do need these to get by, then it’s worthwhile thinking through the consequences of how we’d cope in worst case scenarios in advance of it happening. Trying to work out how much power you need and prioritise any electrical equipment you’d like to continue to be able to use in advance to eke out any available battery storage. Particularly if long outages occurred in the worst weather, at the coldest and darkest time of the year. We fared OK this time, but could have done a lot better.

We both commented towards the end of our 5 plus days with no power and limited light, just how much the passage of time seemed to have slowed for us. A completely unexpected observation. I reckoned by a factor of between 2 and 3. This power-free period seemed to last an age. Whether this was indeed influenced by the lack of light, exhaustion, or stress, I don’t know.

Finally, and perhaps most surprisingly, I experienced a real sense of post traumatic shock in the wider landscape for days after the storm. I can’t explain it in any other way. But I stood outside and felt it, viscerally.

What if other plants and animals had indeed released some sort of unseen physical cues, which we can’t see or smell, after such an incident of extreme stress and damage?  Rather like the honey bees alarm pheromones released when under attack. Or our own subconscious surge of fight or flight hormones, which cause subtle physical changes which alert observers could detect. And that such cues could communicate or spread post-traumatic influences on a wider scale?

Perhaps we’ve now simply lost the ability to tune into such cues. We’re too removed from the sort of really close relationship with nature which our ancestors would have enjoyed. I guess the people who built this house hundreds of years ago, fashioned the critical A-frame trusses from local limbs of old oaks, and knew the value of charring them with blessed candles to scar them and protect the house and inhabitants from evil spirits, might have understood this better. As they sat around the open fire beneath the wicker chimney hood, on long winter nights listening to tales like this:

“… the sorcerers Gwydion and Math created a maiden they named Blodeuwedd or flower-faced from the blossoms of the oak, the broom and meadowsweet. She was created to be the bride of their nephew, Lleu Llaw Gyffes, who could not marry a human woman due to a curse placed on him by Arianrhod, his mother. So he married Blodeuwedd who had never learnt usual social conventions having missed the learning process of growing up. She had an affair with Gronw Pebyrv and together they plotted to kill Lleu. He was badly wounded by Gronw but turning into an eagle, he flew into an oak tree to escape being murdered. The oak was a refuge for him between the living world and the world of death and Lleu stayed there until Gwydion found and cured him.”

The story of Gronw, and how he eventually met his end, speared whilst hiding behind a stone was what originally inspired me to plant and shape over many years, our line of sheltering yews, which have since become our windows to the West.

J.R.R.Tolkein, and Peter Jackson also understood the significance of ancient trees, their spiritual importance, and the deeply felt trauma of their sudden loss. Captured very atmospherically in this brief clip from the extended edition of the ‘Two Towers’, the second of The Lord of the Rings films’.

I’ve just ordered a book, The Heartbeat of Trees: Embracing Our Ancient Bond with Forests and Nature, by Peter Wohlleben (author) and Jane Billinghurst (translator) to try to get a little more insight into what I feel I experienced. I’ll report back when I’ve had a chance to read it.

Even the worst storms have silver linings, and with the biomass central heating out of action during the power outage, we burned a lot more of our own source logs. There’s plenty available now to rebuild our stocks.

Meanwhile more benign scents of survival and hope are now filling the air – Sarcococca, and Daphne bholua are heralding the nadir of the year.

Next week, days begin to lengthen one more.