Leinster flooding - 24th October 2011

Deep Easterly

km79 wrote: »

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

The rain in November was more spread out over a good number of days, although I think over 50mm of rain fell in Galway City in the space of a couple of hours at the start of the main event on the 17th. In the main though, the rainfall in November 2009 was of much lower intensity with the high totals more due to the sheer persistence of the rain.

km79

Thanks thats what I thought . Think 48 mm fell in a 24 hr period here at some stage back then. Scary to think what wud have happened so if that front had hit the west...

Deep Easterly

km79 wrote: »

Thanks thats what I thought . Think 48 mm fell in a 24 hr period here at some stage back then. Scary to think what wud have happened so if that front had hit the west...

I was far more impressed with the rainfall we had on the 6th September 2010, far more intense than anything we had in Nov 09.

redsteveireland

Deep Easterly wrote: »

I was far more impressed with the rainfall we had on the 6th September 2010, far more intense than anything we had in Nov 09.

I'm confused now. Which event caused all the trouble in Claregalway?

edit: just looked it up, it was Nov 09...

Bishop_Donal

Bright echoes over the Irish sea at the moment. Is there a thread set up monitoring these?

km79

That was Nov 2009 . Don't really recall the day DE is referring too but do remember that there was a few very wet days in sept last yr alright

bb1234567

so any more heavy rain coming to dublin and if so when?

Mothman

Pangea wrote: »

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?

There are hundreds of rain gauges All but some mountain gauges ones are read at 0900gmt daily. The mountain gauges are read monthly. Data is sent to HQ after each months end though there is a facility to text or email the daily data so they have an up to date picture of rainfalls.

Saganist

Does look like some heavy showers from the latest radar..

Bishop_Donal

bb1234567 wrote: »

so any more heavy rain coming to dublin and if so when?

Looks imminent! and pretty heavy. Will be interesting to see impact of thunderstorms on already saturated ground.

eigrod

Heavy rain started in Greystones about 10 minutes ago.

Deep Easterly

redsteveireland wrote: »

I'm confused now. Which event caused all the trouble in Claregalway?

edit: just looked it up, it was Nov 09...

The reason Claregalway flooded in Nov 2009 was due to the fact that the ground was totally saturated after the very wet end of October which ran into November, peaking between the 16th and 22nd.

The rain on Sept 6th 2010 happened on the back of an exceptionally dry August and very sunny and warm start to September

Maybe it was a Tuam thing anyway, we got hit with 2 rounds of torrential rain that day. Between 3am and 8am, with the next round lasting 2 hours in the evening. 70.1mm is what I recorded here from these 2 events with the rainfall being of the high intensity type throughout both of them!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Br-S2g2zhsk

The highest daily total I recorded in Nov 2009 was a mere 33mm (as far as I remember).

Edit, took me ages to find this radar animation from Nov 2009. Too many bookmarks at this stage!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aovA_yhXLU

Pangea

Mothman wrote: »

There are hundreds of rain gauges All but some mountain gauges ones are read at 0900gmt daily. The mountain gauges are read monthly. Data is sent to HQ after each months end though there is a facility to text or email the daily data so they have an up to date picture of rainfalls.

Thanks very much, I never knew there was so many rainfall stations.
Is there anywhere were I can see the readings from the rainfall stations i.e do they publish it online?

Bishop_Donal

eigrod wrote: »

Heavy rain started in Greystones about 10 minutes ago.

Any evidence of lightening?

Almost looks like a streamer from the south based on raintoday radar.

www.raintoday.co.uk/

fr wishy washy

I don't like the sound of that rain

eigrod

Bishop_Donal wrote: »

Any evidence of lightening?

Almost looks like a streamer from the south based on raintoday radar.

www.raintoday.co.uk/

I haven't seen lightening or heard thunder, but I'm sitting in a bright room with the tv on so may not have heard/seen it.

octo

Pangea wrote: »

Thanks very much, I never knew there was so many rainfall stations.
Is there anywhere were I can see the readings from the rainfall stations i.e do they publish it online?

Not really, but if you have just a couple of dates in mind you can ring them and ask. A whole series of data, unfortunately, will cost you.

Rougies

Report on yesterday's flooding (edit: "heavy rainfall") event from Met Eireann

http://www.met.ie/news/display.asp?ID=131

Interesting to say the least, especially the return periods in the table. A one in 20 to 25 year event for daily totals and from 40 to 80 year 4-hour rainfall event depending on the area!

4Sheets

Rougies wrote: »

Report on yesterday's flooding (edit: "heavy rainfall") event from Met Eireann

http://www.met.ie/news/display.asp?ID=131

Interesting to say the least, especially the return periods in the table. A one in 20 to 25 year event for daily totals and from 40 to 80 year 4-hour rainfall event depending on the area!

Damm 1 in 80 year event and I ****ing missed most of it..anyway any theories advanced as to whyDublin was targetted so specfically? Have the MET got HAARP now and wanted to keep the Dub fans happy:)

Dublin_Gunner

4Sheets wrote: »

Damm 1 in 80 year event and I ****ing missed most of it..anyway any theories advanced as to whyDublin was targetted so specfically? Have the MET got HAARP now and wanted to keep the Dub fans happy:)

It wasn't just dublin, drogheda and wicklow got it bad (as well as other areas).

But in my completely non scientific view would it because Dublin basically lies in a basin with lots of rivers flowing through it? As well as maybe being surrounded by mountains which are condusive to cloud formation?

Maybe one of the actual meteorologists in the thread could explain!

ninebeanrows

Sorry folks and thanks for all the input.

So sorry for the terrible loss of life during the unprecedented rainfall.

I've been too busy to post as absorbed by the 'chancer' attempting to become our President.

yammycat

bucketybuck wrote: »

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.

Are you for real, there are people arranging to bury their children today, try telling them they are morons. Yes the weather was 'predicted' but having a smiling girl say there is going to be up to 60mm of rain and heavy showers is of no use, people who don't know any better will think 60mm, wow thats nealy up to my ankles I might get my socks wet. They won't envisage raging rivers breaking their banks and sweeping them away.

Compared to the weather service in the US where when severe weather is predicted they will actually let you know your life is in danger and to seek refuge met eireann fails badly.

They seem to think the only reason they exist is to let you know when to bring a brolly on your walk, they could have been more over the past couple of days and actually saved lives and they failed badly.

It's a disgrace and should be looked into.

Irish Steve

Where to start?

We were lucky on Monday night, it stopped raining as the stream in the garden got to within 6 inches of breaking it's banks. When we moved here in 1990, there was never more than 18" in the stream, until it broke it's banks in 2002 and did €120K of damage.

A lot of that can be attributed to the town at least doubling in size, without the underlying infrastructure being doubled, and the responsibility for that can be laid at the doors of both local councils and national government. Local councils for not properly planning and monitoring changes, national government for not providing adequate funding for running the operation of the councils acceptably.

Now that the tiger is not roaring, but Sh**ting on us all, there's no chance of local government being adequately funded.

One of our problems is that the local authority allowed a developer to build a sewer over the stream, so a channel that's 10 Sq Ft cross section is suddenly reduced to 6 Sq Ft at that point. Water can't flow up hill, so the result of this is that the flow backs up. They've been told about it in writing I don't know how many times. I'm coming to the conclusion that the only way to fix this will be a JCB "accident" one night, but arranging it might be tricky, as it's not exactly easily accessible. Writing to them clearly is a complete waste of paper, stamps and time, they don't even bother to reply.

Then there's all the development that happend in the wrong places like flood plains. Flood plains happened for a reason, they are the short term storage for days like Monday, and if they are not there any more, somewhere else gets hammered.

Our situation is also not helped by the design of the stream. It's open in our site, but then goes into a pipe, so OPW insist that there has to be a grid at the entrance to protect the pipe from being blocked by debris. Fine, until a black plastic sack of domestic waste ends up jammed on that grid because the owner is too tight to pay to have it collected, and dumps it in the stream instead. Or it might be all the hedge clippings, or scrap kid's bikes, any and all of them don't go through the grid, and cause a very rapid build up as a result. Maybe the answer would be to go back to having housing rates, that are collected in a different manner, and stop charging for waste collection so that there's no reason for people to dump stuff in streams and the like, but that's not going to happen any time soon.

Then of course, there's the problem that the people designing drainage systems and the like didn't have a clue what they were doing, and built systems that were too small and had no expansion or safety factors built in. I've visited places in the States and Europe where they expect heavy rainfall, and design the system to cope with the run off that happens as a result, and those systems work, but for some reason, the planners here allow things like the stupidity I've mentioned earlier, and I'm sure there are many more examples of the same sort of thing all over the country.

A few messages ago, there was a report of an underground car park flooded because a tree blocked a bridge, so the overflow came down the road, and then went into the car park. Who's at fault there? The tree? I don't think so. The Bridge? Maybe, if it was designed in a way that prevents the adequate flow at peaks. The road that the water escaped on to. Possibly, if the shape of the road meant that the water couldn't get back into it's water course after taking the alternate route round the bridge. The designer/developer of the car park. Very likely, if the river is that close, their design should have accounted for the real possibility of a significant flow of water down the road in the event of an obstruction, so their access should have been designed to allow entry into the car park without allowing the water to take that route as well, or there should have been either an exit for the water, or a positive barrier to it's entry.

Notice I've not yet blamed Met Eireann, or the people at the sharp end of the local authorities. in as much that neither group did anything wrong. ME, along with other forecasters did give as accurate a forecast as can be given, and unless there is a significant change in local authority funding, the people at the sharp end have neither the equipment or the resources to do things like clear leaves and the like. Some of that problem may well be attributable to poor planning and budget management by the people further up the food chain of the authorities, but that's for another thread and another day, probably in out of hours!

Bottom line? Most of the problems that happened on Monday night are directly attributable to the mistakes made during the infamous Celtic Tiger years. Developers all too happy to cut corners, and bend or break the rules, local authorities that have failed to implement the building regulations and the like, and way too many brown envelopes that meant things happened that otherwise might not have, the list is endless, and it's the ordinary people that are now going to be paying the price for that, in some cases for a very long time to come. What are the people flooded for the third time and without insurance supposed to do about the underground river that's doing the damage. They didn't put it there, before it flooded them the first time, they probably didn't even know it was there. Maybe there's a use here for some of the NAMA properties that otherwise will remain empty for a long time to come. If they are in safe locations, and there's doubt about that, perhaps the houses that are no longer insurable should also be transferred to NAMA, and the people who were in those houses should be allowed to move to an alternative location. Not sure what to do with the houses that are being flooded, perhaps they need to be removed, unless there is an acceptable and reliable avoidance plan that can prevent a repeat.

Does this sound like a rant? Maybe, but until you've sat at the bottom of the stairs, looking a a brand new carpet laid less than a week earlier and not yet walked on that is now under a foot of muddy, dirty and sewage contaminated water, you can't know the despair and anger that goes through your mind at that moment. We had to move to alternate accomodation for 7 months after the last flood, and I'm not yet convinced that we are no longer at risk after last Monday, it was way too close for comfort, and given that some of the issues are under the control of the local authority, that makes my blood boil, I know that the sewer I mentioned earlier is directly responsible for at least an additional 12" of depth when the rainfall is high.

So, let's apportion the blame where it belongs, not (this time) at the door of ME, or the workers of the local authorities, but at the senior managers and politicians that have been so busy feathering their own nests that they've lost track of what they were there for, working for and on behalf of the people that put them there in the first place.

Steve

gally74

What you've described makes perfect sense, in 2009 Brian Cowan missed a Hugh opportunity, visiting places like ballinaslow and not moving people out to property lying idle,

The mad thing is this makes economic sense, for he country it would use up 10 s of thousand s of houses and put a floor on the market, most economist would support this.

The old houses could be leveled and just left as amenity green areas.

Tony EH

We got hit bad in Kilmainham when the Camac burst its banks. The fire brigade stormed us out of the house through the back door and over the neighbours roofs. I only had socks on my feet! Not a good experience. The water eventually reached up to about 4FT or more.

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=301137176564956

Not my vid, but it gives you the idea.

Water creeping up the sides of the houses...





The Day after. Our car has reappeared...




The house is a mess downstairs, but at least we had an upstairs to put some stuff into. A lot of the people on the street are in single storey houses.

Still though, when you hear that people have died, it cops you on fairly quickly.

I can't imagine what the family of that guard and the Filipino nurse are going through.

average_runner

Met Eireann got it all right, but it was the councils that got it wrong and they admitted that today.

They didnt think that much rain would fall even though met eireann predicted it.

redsteveireland

Don't forget to post any pictures over here - http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056431141

Iancar29

LETS START A PETITION TO GET THIS RADAR AVAILABLE TO THE PUBLIC ALL THE TIME!




It couldnt be THAT hard to do could it?

Sponge Bob

Iancar29 wrote: »

LETS START A PETITION TO GET THIS RADAR AVAILABLE TO THE PUBLIC ALL THE TIME!

And the 2 new high res radars in Dooncarton and Mt Gabriel so we can see the stuff coming!

octo

Sponge Bob wrote: »

And the 2 new high res radars in Dooncarton and Mt Gabriel so we can see the stuff coming!

Couple of million euro to spare mr finance minister/IMF man for a few new radars?