Two storms, a year apart, left a real mark on Portrush’s living memory — one from the sea, one from the sky.
Hurricane Debbie, 1961
Hurricane Debbie formed off West Africa on 7 September 1961, reached Category 3 strength days later, and made landfall in Ireland at Achill Island, Co. Mayo, on 16 September, with gusts recorded at 183 km/h at Malin Head. The Chronicle’s contemporary headline read “Ulster lashed by 100 mph Gale.” Fifteen people died across Ireland — five in Northern Ireland, ten in the Republic — in what the paper called the worst storm in over a decade. Hundreds of caravans and holiday homes were wrecked, with especially severe losses at Castlerock and the Juniper Hill caravan camp near Portrush.
Eyewitness John McNally, who lived on Main Street near the harbour, recalled sheltering by the old railway bridge over the Old Dock, watching the storm tear through. Seven boats sank in the harbour that night — and more losses were only prevented by two local fishermen, Mac O’Neill and Hughie Patton, who crossed dangerously between vessels in the harbour to secure anchor lines by hand, saving the rest of the fishing fleet from being smashed against the railway bridge and harbour wall.
The Dhu Varren flood, 1960
A year earlier, on 24 August 1960, a different kind of disaster hit Portrush. After a wet July, over four inches of rain fell in just twelve hours, flooding the golf course and suspending both the golf and tennis championships. A culvert carrying floodwater under the railway embankment to West Strand became blocked with storm debris, diverting the water straight into Dhu Varren instead.
Named eyewitnesses recorded a genuinely dramatic scene: Sheila Brown remembered water rising to the second storey of houses and the local bakery destroyed; Marlene Lyle recalled frantically sweeping water out her front door as it gushed in the back; Gerald Bradley, a GPO telephone engineer, remembered floodwater two to three feet deep in Dhu Varren Crescent bungalows, and spent a week restoring telephone service afterward. The Belfast Telegraph reported roughly 50 homes with badly damaged contents, submerged television sets, and bread and milk running scarce as shops flooded. Locals waded and rowed through the water carrying children to safety — remarkably, no injuries were recorded. The Dhu Varren bakery reopened about a month later, its handwritten reopening notice quoting scripture: “We propose (D.V.) to open again for business.”
Both storms are remembered today not for the damage alone, but for how the town pulled together through them — a pattern that, on this coast, tends to repeat.