Donal Hickey: Was this the worst year ever for blizzards and snowdrifts in Cork and Kerry?

Powercuts, stranded people — and a doctor had to be brought by tractor to a patient due to the big freeze of 1962

Snow in Cork in recent years. But 1962 was a bitterly cold winter with much disruption caused by blizzards and snowdrifts

Sitting around firesides during the festive season, people of a certain vintage like to chat about harsh, chilly weather in winters past ­— compared to excessive rainfall and higher temperatures nowadays, as we saw in November for example.

Before climate change, Ireland was virtually guaranteed lengthy, cold stretches, especially in January and February, with the ground white with frost and the night sky bright with stars. Crisp, freezing weather often lasted several weeks, but the winter of 60 years ago has long gone into folk memory.

Christmas 1962 was bitterly cold. A blizzard on New Year’s Eve led to power cuts, plunging some of the country into darkness — the start of the coldest winter of the 20th century here. Nothing quite like it has since been experienced.

During the blizzard, nearly 40 vehicles were marooned in snowdrifts on the top of the hill at Glounsharoon, three miles on the Limerick side of Castleisland, County Kerry.

The big freeze persisted with only brief, milder periods until early March 1963, though snowdrifts were still reported in sheltered corners into April. The highland countryside straddling the borders of counties Kerry, Cork and Limerick, the Wicklow mountains and the Comeragh valley, in Waterford, were hard hit.

In the latest issue of the local history publication, Sliabh Luachra Journal, veteran journalist, Ray Ryan, recalls the hardship suffered by people stranded in remote places, with some unable to get to shops for food.

Funerals were also affected. Cork County Council workers had to cut their way through drifts for a mile near Newmarket to facilitate the removal of a corpse. In other places, coffins had to be taken across fields to waiting hearses.   A doctor had to be brought by tractor to a woman near Ballydesmond. She was placed on a stretcher, which was strapped to a tractor-trailer, and brought to the village. She was transferred to a waiting ambulance and moved to Mallow Hospital.

Many sheep died in blizzards and wildlife suffered badly. Starving birds reportedly came into houses searching for scraps of food. Foraging foxes came close to dwellings for the same reason.

There had been plans to use a helicopter to get food to staff manning the Mullaghanish transmitter station in Cork in 1962 but these had to be abandoned due to gale-force winds

The arctic weather even put the new, national television service in jeopardy, with snowdrifts 20 feet deep on the narrow road to the Mullaghanish transmitter outside Ballyvourney, County Cork.

Using a helicopter to relieve those stranded on Mullaghanish was ruled out due to gale-force winds. Instead, a traxcavator began the slow task of clearing the three-mile roadway to the top of the 2,133 ft mountain.

“There was no communication with the station, but caretaker Dermot Creedon, Coomaclohy, brought potatoes, eggs, and bread to the station after a hazardous journey," Ryan writes.