Orange and yellow rain warnings issued for 12 counties as flooding risk grows
Ellen O'Donoghue and Vivienne Clarke
A status orange rain warning is to be in place for three counties on Thursday, as a further nine counties are to be under status yellow warning.
It comes as the country, particularly the south east, has been battered by extensive rain over the last week.
Waterford will be under the status orange rain warning from 9am today, while the warning will be in place in Dublin and Wicklow from 12pm.
The warning expires in Wexford at 9am on Friday, while the warning for Dublin and Wexford will expire at 12pm on Friday.
Met Éireann has warned that very heavy rain falling on already saturated ground, combined with high river levels and high tides will lead to localised flooding, river flooding, and difficult travel conditions.
Carlow, Kildare, Kilkenny, Laois, Wexford and Tipperary are all under a status yellow rain warning from 9am today until 9am on Friday, while Cavan, Monaghan and Louth will fall under the warning from 12pm today until 12pm on Friday.
The heavy rain forecast for Thursday follows a brief respite from wet conditions on Wednesday. However, many rivers remain close to or above bank-full after last week’s rain, Met Éireann said.
This has left catchments “highly sensitive” to any additional rainfall, it said.
Separately, it said high spring tides over the coming days, combined with strong onshore winds and storm surge, would increase the risk of wave overtopping and coastal flooding in exposed areas.
Keith Leonard, from the National Directorate for Fire and Emergency Management, said “absolutely every engineering solution and every kind of interim measure” is being taken to deal with the record-breaking levels of water in river catchments around the country.
Senior forecaster with Met Éireann, Gerry Murphy, has warned “it is going to be a very, very wet day” with rain continuing to fall until mid-afternoon on Friday.
“This is going to be a lot of consistent, persistent rain," he added, but the rain will arrive more slowly than anticipated.
Speaking on both Newstalk Breakfast and RTÉ radio’s Morning Ireland, Murphy also cautioned that the rain, particularly in the Dublin mountains, is going to have a “knock-on” effect at lower levels in areas such as Shankill and Rathfarnham and other parts of South County Dublin.
This weather regime is going to continue, today, tomorrow, over the weekend, with a further band next week, he added.
"Once this rain does get started this morning, it's actually going to continue right the way through the rest of the day, overnight and through tomorrow morning as well. So there's going to be rain where basically it's just going to continue raining from once it starts mid-morning and then basically it's just rain, rain until maybe mid-afternoon tomorrow," Murphy said.
“As has been well documented at this stage, the river levels are very high, the tides are high, the ground is saturated, so moderate amounts of rainfall can and probably will cause flooding in some places, but this is actually going to be a very wet day."
Rainfall in the Wicklow Mountains will have the effect of “activating some very responsive rivers and streams in the mountains, which then will have a knock-on effect as it flows down to lower levels," according to Murphy.
"But it does look like those heavier, those more significant high rainfall totals will also encroach into the Dublin mountains and parts of South Dublin.
Rainfall for January and the start of February has been well above average for the south and east of the country, "so it doesn't take much to tip into a flooding scenario".
