Leinster flooding - 24th October 2011

elius

amacachi wrote: »

You're right, I don't know why they bother with any attempts at flood defences anywhere since you've proven it's pointless.

So what type of flood defence would you like to see....

amacachi

Maybe when diverting a river and putting a huge new development on it it might be an idea to have some redundancy in the infrastructure. I know that sounds crazy.
Also I'm not certain what recommendations were made after the Dodder burst its banks in the 80s but one of the guys who made the recommendations was lecturing a class I took and said none of what they suggested was done. There was some kind of development going on in the area at the time and they said it shouldn't continue, it did. They said the areas especially around bridges should be deepened etc. but it didn't happen.
Much of the localised road flooding which then caused basement levels to flood was down to poor drainage.


Some level of flooding at some points is inevitable but criticising places where defences and preventative measures are insufficient is important and in the longterm may actually lead to something getting done. Refusing to criticise is just plain silly. I don't know massive amounts about the technicalities of trying to mitigate against flooding but when someone who gets paid to put together studies and is then ignored gives out about getting ignored when they have no more financial interest in the matter would suggest to me that a lot more could be done.

EDIT: I'm not from Dublin so haven't had much chance to make direct observations but when I was in Ballsbridge last year I noticed the Dodder was exactly the same as the photo we'd been shown of it in the 80s a few days earlier.
Here in Dundalk the best defences we could have would be to not build on a boggy floodplain but I suppose that would be too much to ask for.

gurramok

Dodder aftermath, overturned bench and the remains of a car.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XB2BcTOho-E

DOCARCH

gurramok wrote: »

Dodder aftermath, overturned bench and the remains of a car.

That looks like the VW Golf that floated out of the Dropping Well car park!

gurramok

Rugby club, spot the ducks!


Dunno whats was going on here, looks like a makeshift dam, behind this flooded Ballsbridge(sweepstakes apts and cottages)


Heart of the disaster zone, surreal stuff on the streets here. Mud in people's homes etc.


River bank collapse at Marian College, Sandymount


Bits of tree stuck at Londonbridge, Sandymount

thunderdog

Does anyone know if Harolds Cross is still flooded? Gona try cycling home soon enough.

Iancar29

gurramok wrote: »

Rugby club, spot the ducks!

Dunno whats was going on here, looks like a makeshift dam, behind this flooded Ballsbridge(sweepstakes apts and cottages)
SHocking shots man !

Whats going on at the bridge?!.... The surely aint good to be working on ha.

Post these over in the picture sub forum too ye . Its good to have all photos documented together.

kingshankly

thunderdog wrote: »

Does anyone know if Harolds Cross is still flooded? Gona try cycling home soon enough.

if its a pedalo you'll be grand;)

MudSkipper

thunderdog wrote: »

Does anyone know if Harolds Cross is still flooded? Gona try cycling home soon enough.

Cycled in this morning through there and had to take a short diversion via the cottages... so should be grand, even if still flooded :-)

thunderdog

Yeah cycled through it this morning at 7am and was pretty bad then. Will give it a try anyway and see what its like.cheers

yammycat

Iancar29 wrote: »

THey DID Forecast this amount!, In each alert they said FLooding in places!
And VERY HEAVY SHOWERS...

I think their forcast was very poor, they should really have some kind of grading scale for how bad its going to be because they say 'with flooding in places' a lot and it can be anything from very large puddles to major rivers bursting their banks and people dieing.

The same goes for heavy showers, showers last minutes not 24 hours, heavy showers are reported by met eireann every other day, neither saying heavy showers or local flooding gave any indication of how bad it would be.

If they had been a bit more specific that this would be a major event with possible loss of life and all precautions should be taken well maybe some people wouldn't be dead now.

Su Campu

A nice compilation of some videos and images here....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAozRKfTXjQ

DOCARCH

yammycat wrote: »

I think their forcast was very poor, they should really have some kind of grading scale for how bad its going to be because they say 'with flooding in places' a lot and it can be anything from very large puddles to major rivers bursting their banks and people dieing.

The same goes for heavy showers, showers last minutes not 24 hours, heavy showers are reported by met eireann every other day, neither saying heavy showers or local flooding gave any indication of how bad it would be.

If they had been a bit more specific that this would be a major event with possible loss of life and all precautions should be taken well maybe some people wouldn't be dead now.

Honestly, I think that's quite unfair. It's the weather they are trying to forecast. I feel enough/fair warning was given. They simply cannot be 'specific' about the weather - they do not control it!

pistolpetes11

yammycat wrote: »

I think their forcast was very poor, they should really have some kind of grading scale for how bad its going to be because they say 'with flooding in places' a lot and it can be anything from very large puddles to major rivers bursting their banks and people dieing.

The same goes for heavy showers, showers last minutes not 24 hours, heavy showers are reported by met eireann every other day, neither saying heavy showers or local flooding gave any indication of how bad it would be.

If they had been a bit more specific that this would be a major event with possible loss of life and all precautions should be taken well maybe some people wouldn't be dead now.

I think Su Campu's signature will explain this best from now on !

Su Campu's Sig wrote:

Consider a rotating spherical envelope of a mixture of gases, occasionally murky and always somewhat viscous. Place it around an astronomical object nearly 8000 miles in diameter. Tilt the whole system back and forth with respect to its source of heat and light. Freeze it at the poles of its axis of rotation and intensely heat it in the middle. Cover most of the surface of the sphere with a liquid that continually feeds moisture into the atmosphere. Subject the whole to tidal forces induced by the sun and a captive satellite. Then try to predict the conditions of one small portion of that atmosphere for a period of one to several days in advance"

Spanish Eyes

Don't know if this posted before, so here it is. Hallowee'n coming too! Cemetery subsides in Howth due to flood. Ugh. Still the coffins look in good shape all the same.

http://www.thejournal.ie/what-the-fliuch-coffins-exposed-as-cemetery-wall-subsides-in-howth-dublin-263275-Oct2011/

Chris_5339762

Cloragh Mills Apartment complex, next to the Owenadoher river.

In this case, the complex was close to the river but well above it, so no flood risk.

However, the river burst its banks due to a tree falling a kilometer upstream and damming the river. The river flowed out onto the road, down the entire road and straight down the ramp of the complex into the underground carpark where the water (river basically) overwhelmed the drainage.

I dont really think that could have been predicted!





All but 1 car saved - this person was away but their other car was ok.

Godge

yammycat wrote: »

I think their forcast was very poor, they should really have some kind of grading scale for how bad its going to be because they say 'with flooding in places' a lot and it can be anything from very large puddles to major rivers bursting their banks and people dieing.

The same goes for heavy showers, showers last minutes not 24 hours, heavy showers are reported by met eireann every other day, neither saying heavy showers or local flooding gave any indication of how bad it would be.

If they had been a bit more specific that this would be a major event with possible loss of life and all precautions should be taken well maybe some people wouldn't be dead now.

Ok, there are 100s of variables to take account of when making a weather forecast.

When forecasting the result of a football match, there are four or five (teams, ground, referee, weather, form). And how many football experts predicted Six and the City?

The forecast was as good as you are going to get anywhere for a small area like Ireland and an even smaller area such as Dublin. If you followed this thread in the days beforehand, you will have seen some of the models predicting that the main body of rain would stay offshore. To their credit Met Eireann (and MTC) didn't go with that scenario and warned of the rain to hit Dublin. You cannot predict 10% of annual rainfall in six hours as fell in Casement. That is the sort of outlier and unexpected happening (once in 100 years) that saw City win 6-1 (or so my Utd. friends are telling me).

In football terms, Met Eireann predicted a big win for City (they didn't expect 6-1 but 4-1 would have seen them correct).

Elmer Blooker

The amount of rain that fell on Dublin City is only half the story. The Dublin and Wicklow Mts receive a lot more rainfall than sea level and all this rain eventually feeds rivers and streams like the Camac, Poddle and Dodder (not forgetting the Slang which I never heard of til yesterday !!) This is why the flooding was much worse in the south of the city.
ME DID PREDICT SEVERE WEATHER

NickDrake

People hear Dublin City Council having a go at Met Eireann on six one news?

Saying the rain fell over a period of 3-4 hours as oppossed to what was forecast.

Forecast was for that amount of rain to fall over 3 days.

DOCARCH

NickDrake wrote: »

People hear Dublin City Council having a go at Met Eireann on six one news?

Saying the rain fell over a period of 3-4 hours as oppossed to what was forecast.

Forecast was for that amount of rain to fall over 3 days.

I started writing a response.................but I couldn't be bothered!

Who's next on the blame game, mother nature (for the wind that blew down so many leaves that blocked the drains that the Council did not sweep up that casused most of the flooding)?

Su Campu

NickDrake wrote: »

People hear Dublin City Council having a go at Met Eireann on six one news?

Saying the rain fell over a period of 3-4 hours as oppossed to what was forecast.

Forecast was for that amount of rain to fall over 3 days.

Now you're just telling lies. You obviously won't take on board what everyone here has said about what they actually forecast, and are still trying a desperate attempt to back up your (non-existent) argument. The forecast was as was highlighted here earlier; 40 - 70 mm Monday. Get over it. Is the fact that most of it fell in an afternoon ME's fault?

Maybe you work for DCC, they way several people here allegedly work for ME?

pistolpetes11

Su Campu wrote: »

Now you're just telling lies. You obviously won't take on board what everyone here has said about what they actually forecast, and are still trying a desperate attempt to back up your (non-existent) argument. The forecast was as was highlighted here earlier; 40 - 70 mm Monday. Get over it. Is the fact that most of it fell in an afternoon ME's fault?

Maybe you work for DCC, they way several people here allegedly work for ME?

You need to bee more like Chris Foy , a wave of a red card or two would put an end to such dribble !

gbee

I have to say this has probably been one of the more informative and gripping threads ever. And I do follow a few of them from time to time, even Nick is amusing.

Thanks to all who contributed and condolences to the families of the deceased.

cherryghost

Nick you quite honestly don't have a clue what you're talking about. If you think you can pinpoint the weather down to the passing hours, be my guest. Just don't get hung up when the nick's of this world start flaming you.

Thor

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilNlFmmKUJY

Small video i took of the Dropping well after the floods, The entire parking lot I was in there was completely flooded and reached the other side of the road aswell.

slowburner

For the curious, here's what used to be underneath Dundrum Shopping Centre.[Embedded Image Removed]

bucketybuck

yammycat wrote: »

I think their forcast was very poor, they should really have some kind of grading scale for how bad its going to be because they say 'with flooding in places' a lot and it can be anything from very large puddles to major rivers bursting their banks and people dieing.

The same goes for heavy showers, showers last minutes not 24 hours, heavy showers are reported by met eireann every other day, neither saying heavy showers or local flooding gave any indication of how bad it would be.

If they had been a bit more specific that this would be a major event with possible loss of life and all precautions should be taken well maybe some people wouldn't be dead now.

First world problems eh?

Not that long ago that level of rainfall would have crippled the city, completely destroyed it, yet here in the 21st century for most of the people things are back to normal already. We had the ability to predict the weather days in advance, and we had to technology to handle a months rain in hours with the majority of people merely inconvenienced.

And what do morons who still have the power to run their computers do? They bitch about the guys who actually did the impossible and predicted the weather.
"Sure they predicted the weather, but they didn't do enough waaaaaaaaaaa".

Such great privilege so utterly wasted.

Deep Easterly

NickDrake wrote: »

Forecast was for that amount of rain to fall over 3 days.

2 days actually.

COED definition of the word 'forecast':
A prediction or estimate, especially of the weather or financial trend.

Nick, next time you are at a loose end, you should sit down and watch a small cloud, then pick a specific spot in the sky where you think that cloud is destined for, then try and predicted how that cloud will move, develop or decay as it heads for that spot and you'll find that the movement and destination of even the smallest of clouds are nearly impossible to predict. Try that then on a much more grander scale and you'll get an idea of the challenges meteorologists have to face day in, day out.

Fair enough, more rain fell than expected; if less rain fell that was predicted there would probably be an equal amount of complaints. Trying to predict exactly how many milimeters of rain will fall in any one area is completely impossible. Try and be a bit more understanding.

km79

Was wondering today DE how did totals compare with east Galway totals for Nov 2009 ?

Pangea

Just wondering, do the other Met Eireann weather stations that are not checked regulary measure rainfall amounts. e.g. Hatchery in Glenties Co.Donegal ? and if so when do they release the data from these stations?