“I haven’t seen the like of it since 1963 – the snow was about a foot in the fields for six weeks that time,” said Charleville parish priest Canon Donal O’Mahony, as he surveyed the mounds of snow surrounding Holy Cross Church in the north Cork town.
A native of nearby Mallow, Canon O’Mahony has been in Charleville for nine years, but he said he has never before had to deal with the impact of weather like what the town has experienced in the last few days, when flurries of snow quickly thickened and began to blanket the town.
“It was snowing here for 27 hours – it started at five o’clock on Saturday evening – just as Met Éireann predicted – and it didn’t stop until eight o’clock on Sunday night, so a huge amount of snow fell, and it was heavy – we had over a foot of snow here in town within a few hours.
“And I know in some of the higher estates around the town, by the time the snow stopped falling on Sunday night, people were reporting that the snow was up to the door handles on their cars – that will tell you how bad it was – and of course the footpaths are very bad, they’re dynamite.”
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Although Canon O’Mahony and his curate, Fr Patrick Corkery, have been able to say Mass, numbers attending have been low because people cannot leave their homes and make the journey safely.
[ People in Kerry had to melt snow to get water supplies amid cold snapOpens in new window ]
“We’ve been able to say our morning Mass, but the numbers are way down – this morning we had only six, whereas normally we might have 60 or 70 to 100 – nobody is venturing out.
“We haven’t had to defer any funerals or baptisms, but the ground clearance now is a big problem – the snow has stopped, but it’s compacted and frozen, but a volunteer offered to come in this morning and clear the ground around the church, so it is more accessible.”
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Gearys’ Pub in Charleville made headlines when it emerged the accumulation of snow caused a roof over an outdoor area to collapse, but Holy Cross Church suffered a similar problem when the mounds of snow slid off the roof and brought down the guttering.
“There was at least eight to 10 inches of snow on the ground around the church, but we also had a fierce bank of snow on the roof and when it started to roll off, it took down all the guttering and it brought down some of the chutes with it on both sides of the church and out the back.”
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