It is a cliche that everyone remembers exactly where they were at the time they heard that President John F. Kennedy had been shot. For many Irish people of a certain age, a similar chronological beacon shining from the past is this day 15 years ago: it was on August 25th, 1986, that Hurricane Charley paid an unwelcome visit to our shores.
Despite winds which howl at hurricane force, force 12 on the Beaufort Scale, hurricanes in the strict scientific sense do not occur at these latitudes. A proper hurricane needs a warm and humid ambience to survive, and once it moves northwards over the colder waters of the north Atlantic, it quickly dissipates.
We do from time to time, however, experience severe, albeit conventional, north Atlantic depressions, into which a hurricane has been subsumed, and which in the popular parlance is referred to by the name of the tropical storm in which it may have its origins.
This was the case with Charley. It formed as a hurricane 30 miles off the coast of South Carolina on August 15th, 1986. As it moved along the eastern seaboard of the US, the winds over land were strong but not unusual, and the heavy rain it brought was welcome in drought-stricken areas of North Carolina and Virginia.
By August 19th, Charley, officially no longer classified a hurricane, was moving eastwards over the Atlantic.
It took the storm five days to make the crossing. By Sunday, August 25th, it appeared as a rapidly deepening depression about 300 miles to the southwest of Kerry, and as the day progressed the low passed close to the south coast.
It was evident that Charley's character had remained unchanged. The winds, as had been the case across the Atlantic, were not exceptional, but the rainfall was; it poured down in unprecedented quantities on southern and eastern parts of Ireland, breaking long-established records and leaving widespread flooding in its wake.
Some 200 millimetres of rain were deposited on Kilcoole in Co Wicklow, and 24-hour totals of 70 to 100 millimetres were common that day over large areas of that county and the adjoining parts of Co Dublin.
In Ballsbridge and Sandymount more than 400 houses were flooded when the Dodder overflowed its banks.
The depression reached Wales by early evening, and the storm abated that night as it continued eastwards across England.
Charley had rudely disrupted the "cool sequester'd vale of life", and it was some time before many could resume the noiseless tenor of their way.