This article is from page 9 of the 2011-06-28 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 9 JPG
A LOCAL woman who managed to get photos of a funnel cloud in the outskirts of Kinvara last week, says that she never feared getting caught up in a dangerous tornado.
Amateur photographer Kit O’Sullivan managed to capture the rare funnel cloud as it came over North Clare and South Galway last Tuesday evening, June 21. It is still unclear if the funnel cloud touched ground – thus making it one of the first ever tornadoes recorded in the Clare area.
“Myself and my sister Mary were looking out the window, watching the cloud because we could see it coming in and we knew it was a thunder cloud. The next thing we saw the funnel come out of the bottom of the cloud – it shot down, about half way down the sky from the cloud.
“We though straight away that it must be a tornado – just from watching all these American shows at the moment about tornadoes. As it happened I had the camera with me so I ran out and got a few pictures of the cloud. It is very hard to tell for sure but it certainly appeared to me that the cloud was over land and not still over the sea.
“I never thought that I might be danger at all. God no, my first thought was to get the camera out and get outside and get a few pictures. I love watching the weather, I love thunder storms and things like that so I am always looking at the sky to see what is going on. It is better than television.”
Instances of funnel clouds and mini-tornadoes are becoming more common on the west coast of Ireland. Locals people also spotted a similar funnel cloud close to the airfield in Spanish Point earlier this year.
“The weather is certainly changing. If you look at the weather we had last week and then the weather we had on Friday and Saturday – you forget that we are in the month of June,” continued Kit.
“When you see the severe winters that we are getting, that we have never gotten before, I think that this is a clear sign that the whole ecosystem is upside down and the funnel clouds are just an example of that.”
More pictures of the funnel cloud are now available on www.irishweatheronline.com.