Man can’t live on bread alone... unless it’s snowing

AFTER all the portents of doom from Met Éireann and the Taoiseach’s warning that everybody should be indoors by 4pm, there were two things missing in Dingle on Thursday afternoon: snow and sliced bread.

In what was an unlikely turn of events, the people of West Kerry actually heeded the warnings of blizzards and a big freeze the likes of which we’ve never seen before, and by mid afternoon on Thursday the streets of Dingle were empty of all bar the foolish and the brave.

But people didn’t make off the safety of the hearth before stocking up with sliced pan. Lots of it. In Garvey’s Supervalu there was plenty of shop-baked, unsliced brown bread; but the sliced pan shelves were bare. We didn’t know it before now, but it seems sliced pan is an essential survival food.

Eventually the snow did reach West Kerry: there was a light dusting on the streets of Dingle by 10pm and by 2am the gathering snow proved irresistible to some hardy local youngsters who abandoned home comforts to engage in a snowball fight on Main Street – for fear that it might be melted by the morning.

But the snow didn’t melt away. It blanketed Corca Dhuibhne and accumulated in deep drifts that made the Conor Pass impassable and blocked boithríns and back roads, even though the council did a great job of keeping the main roads open.

On Friday morning Kerry County Council workers were out early clearing snow off the footpaths in Dingle but on Saturday they faced a much bigger job in Baile na hAbha and surrounding areas near Feothanach where they worked from 4pm until 1am the following morning clearing a road that was buried under more than a metre of snow so that emergency services would be able to reach vulnerable people if they needed help.

Although temperatures rose and a thaw set in on Sunday, Council workers were still clearing snow from back roads around Glens on Monday and the Conor Pass was expected to remain closed – officially at least – until Wednesday or Thursday.

Shane Whelan in the early stages of snowman construction at Flaherty’s Daybreak in Milltown on Friday.

Council worker Seamus Kennedy clearing snow off the footpaths in Dingle on Friday morning following the overnight snowfall.

By 5pm on Thursday council workers had gritted the footpaths and many people in Dingle were heeding Taoiseach Leo Varadkar’s ‘stay at home’ appeal, but still there was no snow to be seen on the bright spring afternoon.

Just in case the opportunity for a snowball fight would melt away before morning, Seán Murchan, Cathal Moriarty and Jamie O’Flaherty were out on Main Street at 1.40am after the first snow fell on Dingle.

Paige O’Malley engaged in snowman construction in Cluain Ard on Friday.