Snow is forecast for parts of Ireland this week. Surely better than what they are experiencing in Australia. How will our young people who have emigrated from our temperate climate tolerate this?
From The Sydney Morning Herald
Red alert for freak weather
Date: January 11, 2013
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begin in 1 seconds.
It is the heatwave that laps east and
west and seems hard to dislodge. Even tropical cyclone Narelle, wandering off
the north-west coast of Western Australia, has so far failed to budge the giant
heat cell over the continent.
“The system is holding its
shape,” said the manager of climate monitoring at the weather bureau, Karl
Braganza. “You are still getting the hot core over the inland.”
But the core is stretching eastward again, sending the mercury higher for
populated regions ranging from Victoria to Queensland. Brisbane had its hottest
night in seven years, with the temperature dropping to 25.8 degrees but the
city “was very humid so it felt more than that”, said Weatherzone
meteorologist Melissa MacKellar.
Sea breezes are forecast to keep the temperatures in Sydney around the harbour
to peaks of 30 and 34 degrees on Friday and Saturday, according to the latest
forecasts. But move only about 25 kilometres west to Bankstown, and days of 41
and 39 await.
Melbourne can expect 37 on Friday before a cool change arrives and keeps
temperatures down for a week. Most other parts of Australia won’t get much
relief.
“Our models are showing the high
pressure system dominating weather over southern and south-eastern regions of
Australia for the next week,” said Ms MacKellar.
The first eight days of 2013 made it
into the top 20 hottest days for Australia in more than a century in terms of
the average maximum temperature. The mean temperatures – averaging maximums and
minimums – smashed the previous record on Monday and then again on Tuesday.
The mean of 32.32 degrees on Tuesday
was almost half a degree higher than the record that had stood for more than 40
years until this week.
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This is a long story but an interesting one. Once upon a time in the 20th century Listowel had many photographers. One of these, when he was folding up his business, gave a box of “contact sheets” to Bryan MacMahon. Contact sheets were pages of tiny little previews of the actual pictures. Bryan kept these safely all his life and, no doubt, he knew the people in the photographs.
Maurice MacMahon, when he was dealing with his father’s papers found only one of these sheets left. We will presume that Bryan had given the others to someone and not got them back. Anyway Maurice realized that these photos would be of enormous interest to Listowel people but he had no names for any of the people who were the subjects of the photos.
Then followed the long story, involving Jimmy Deenihan, James Kenny, John Lynch, Dylan Boyer and ended with me. Everyone told me that the best person for recognizing people in photos is Margaret Dillon and they were right. Margaret has been assiduous in her tracking down of these people and now there are another cohort of people involved in identifying these Listowel people from the 1940s. Margaret has established that many of the people in the pictures were employees of McKenna’s and the photographs were taken beside Walshe’s drapery shop which later became part of McKenna’s.
Here is the first tranche of these photos with the information that Margaret has managed to glean about them.
The man on the left is John Michael Murphy who still lives in Church St. Margaret called to him to see if he could identify his companion. He couldn’t but thinks that he may have come from Ballylongford.
This stylish lady is the late Tess Murphy of Greenville. In one of these ironic twists she is actually Margaret’s god mother. She passed away a few years ago.
This man about town is Jack Ashe, uncle of Mary and Haulie who still live in Listowel. Jack lived at Convent Cross with his sister, Nora who ran a sweet shop.
(more to follow)
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I kid you not!!!!!!!!
Yes, it is what you think it is… the latest gadget to keep your toddler happy while he sits on the throne. Words fail me!
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From last week’s Kerryman…young scientists in 1983
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Did you watch this fellow and his road trip from Listowel to Tralee?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=recuQLATiGo
It has been pointed out to me that while the clip was published on Nov 6 2012, the video must have been taken much earlier because there are no roadworks and the road is in the old layout. Well spotted!