KINGS INNS PARK

My mother's grand mother told her about the Night of The Big Wind when the roof of their house caught fire because the embers from the fireplace were sucked up the chimney by the storm thus setting the thatched roof on fire. Even though all the women in the chain lived longer than 95 years I am not convinced that my mother's grandmother had even been born in 1839 but my mother claims that her grandmother wa 8 or 9 years old at the time of the storm.

The Night of the Big Wind was a powerful European windstorm that swept 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 918mbars and tracked eastwards to the north of Ireland, with gusts of over 100 knots (185 km/h; 115 mph), before moving across the north of England to continental Europe, where it eventually dissipated. At the time, it was the worst storm to hit Ireland for 300 years.