Lessons from storm Chandra

Ya I've been hit by major flooding. The cause was pretty much a confluence of factors and I really wouldn't be placing the blame on meteorology. 99% of the issue was lack of long term planning and preparation by the council.

Aparently they do but the information is sent to local councils and not released to the public like weather reports or warnings.

Realistically this was on the councils in the areas to know that there had been a lot of rain, there was a fair bit forecasted and that drains etc would need to be cleared. But there's not a huge amount of pro-activeness in clearing out of drains so that it only gets done when there is a problem.

Damned if they do, and damned if they don't.

After every single weather event, or non-event, in this country you get the same moany windbags giving out yards about RTE/Met Éireann/Martin King, looking to make it all about themselves. If nothing happens, then "what were all the warnings about". If there's some consequences, then it's "where were all the warnings!!!?!"

Same as always.

Silly question, did you not notice that the ground was saturated and deduce that flooding was a likely result of a storm in such circumstances? It has barely stopped raining all month.

There were yellow weather warnings issued, it was on the news, on the weather.

I do not know where you are based, here in Louth the council were pro-active in advising the public and making sandbags available in areas prone to flooding.

I was listening to the radio earlier and the reporter said that more weather was expected later in the week 🤣🤣 . I hope she read the script wrong.

I don't agree on a few fronts: People need to appreciate, as with this warning, that a lot of local and not necessarily weather variables also come into play.

Driving to work with caution under a yellow warning, of course, doesn't take into account unsecured items that may blow over, trees that were loosened up in the last storm, trees at different times of year covered in leaves, trees in very wet groups - all leading to a higher chance of those trees falling over - even in "yellow" level winds.

In relation to flooding - it's been said already, but there are a number of factors that determine whether a specific area will flood or not - I don't believe ME can get down to a granular level to analyse the state of local draingage, the water table, the changes that have been made over the years to the water table levels, the changes made to drainage due to new buildings, new roads, redirection of drainage ditches on farm land etc etc.

The lessons learned are pretty much the same lessons we learn from almost all flood events.

1. Rivers need to be dredged. This needs to be done every few years. This was a major contributor to some localised flooding in Galway here circa 2011 - rivers were dredged - haven't had the problem since - that said there's been significant development in these areas over the past few years and I don't believe river has been dredged since so next major rain event will be interesting.
2. Drainage ditches, gullys and similir infrastructure needs to be kept well maintained. This can be difficult with leaves/rubbish etc covering gullys and getting into soakways and pipes etc.
3. Most controversially - don't build on historic floodplains or too close to water courses. We have done this with consistency in this country over the past two decades and I believe it still continues. Not only could this impact on the houses that are built in these areas themselves, it also has the capability to impact on other houses, that may not necessarily have had flood issues in the past, due to the changes in water table as a result, and potential amendmend of flood land for the river. County councils continue to issue planning to these developments, usually with a "flood report" requirement. Having seen how these are put together and what they take into account, I wouldn't be too confident of anything in those reports.
4. If a house is getting flooded consinuously, perhaps that house needs to be abandoned/knocked and some scheme enacted to help the homeowner (also controversial)

As a nation however, we tend to but a push on on improving some of these things in the short term after an "event" but let it slide then, leading to these issues every few years.

Do you reckon that's 100 percent accurate?

Does it take into account the dip on a country road that gets flooded for the past year or so due to a farmers drain being blocked?

I personally think that kinda thing is a complete waste of time. I'd wager all it does is track the rivers and rainfall data. It's not exactly rocket science and going by how we always complain this the country, it'd be ignored. At best it's just a colour coded map, who really knows what actual data goes into its make up outside of following historic data and river flood plains.

To most here, local knowledge will give you a fair idea of where the floods will be variable dependant, the issue really is what the species does to make these flooding issues far worse. We dont seem to want to learn from past mistakes or in the event of constantly flooding property, come up with a scheme to ensure that property isn't lived in again (assuming remediation works don't work)