Weather Diary / For Slanted Magazine Europe Issue
A storm never announces its arrival early enough. The howl of a hurricane is born of a clear sky.
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By the time Hurricane Debbie hit the coast of Ireland on the 16th of September 1961, the tropical storm had amassed considerable strength. The island went into a quiet standstill. The sellers at the market of Galway stayed home, nervously waiting for the storm to pass. The sea rose, ripping docks apart and flooding coasts. Near Arranmore, waves grew into 15-metre monsters. Ships struggled to stay afloat and safely docked to their moorings; the unluckiest washed ashore at ports. Fishing boats were blown ashore and small crafts sunk in their home harbours. On the coast of Bantry, thirteen Spanish sailors were rescued from their trawler that foundered after running aground in a lucky escape from the storm. Ireland itself was looking for shelter: a few months before the storm hit the coast, Irish politicians with solemn faces had submitted the first application from a non-founding country to join the European Economic Community, a promise of an economically unified Europe and a political union. More than three decades later, the EEC would become one of the foundations for the European Union’s three pillars. The hurricane hit Ireland at the dawn of a new era: one of a strong belief in a unified continent.
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On the 16th of October 2017, an apricot sky stretched above the United Kingdom. Devon smelled like burning dust, a symptom of forest fires in Portugal and Spain. Off the coast of Ireland, Hurricane Ophelia was ripping trees from their roots in tree nurseries and leaving a hundred thousand homes dark for the night. The highest wind speed ever recorded on the island was caught on tape at Fastnet Rock. It was the worst storm on the island since Hurricane Debbie. Usually, the cold Atlantic water would be enough to stop tropical storms in their tracks, but Ophelia, born west of the Azores, swam through. A few months before Ophelia travelled over the Atlantic, Theresa May had signed a letter and triggered Article 50, officially starting the countdown to the disintegration of the European Union as it was built.
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When a storm has passed, were it not for the debris, floods and torn buildings, you would never know it passed through here in the first place.
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Weather diary is a study of two nearly identical events that both took place in an era of change: one brought Europe closer together, while the other edged it apart. When a hurricane passes, it leaves debris, but it also leaves a clean slate: it’s now up to Europe to decide how to rebuild the new old continent.
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Matilda Kivelä is a writer with a background in history and international relations (London School of Economics and Political Science). She is currently working in advertising, developing her sculpture practice and researching narratives of 1970s Los Angeles.
