Hurricane Ophelia and fishing boats off Ireland

The excellent WindyTV website gives weather watchers a superb selection of data display possibilities easily selected from the side menu - results can be saved as 'favourite' views of data and waypoints set on the chart that trigger email alerts if you sign up (free) to the site...

Fastnet Lighthouse Twitter feed has been posting regular updates - and they are to the east of the most destructive path of the storm...

VesselFinder's AIS shows a number of big, mainly Spanish fishing vessels sheltering at anchor...

and plenty more tied up in Castletownbeare harbour...

and though this satellite AIS shot reveals that there are still plenty of fishing boats riding out the storm to the west of Ireland in and around the Porcupine Bank area...

a closer look at a wider view shows that there are indeed very few fishing boats south of Ireland where the most powerful part of the storm was predicted to pass - twenty years ago the boats would not have been able to predict where they fish with the confidence they can today...

and, as this WindyTV wave height chart shows the path giving the highest predicted waves is to the south of ROI...

the K1 weather buoy shows just how quickly wave height can increase at sea - to over 35 feet...

the screen shot of the anemometer at Cork Lighthouse right in the path of the storm...

though to give you some idea what boats have to contend with when fishing for mackerel - this was taken on the Lerwick registered Adenia a few years back during the making of this advert for Brewdog's Atlantic IPA beer.