Heavy Rain brings flood risk for East, Midlands and South on Thursday

It's been raining down here again for the last half hour.
I'm not too sure we'll have a repeat of the 4am Dublin thunder again tonight [it was 2am to 5am down here by the way] as the stalled front is making it's way very slowly NE meaning the pulses will shortly be confined to within a few miles of the coast and tonight gone into Britain.

Behind are showers and if it's thunder you are looking for,the tables turn imho as west will be best.
Wouldnt rule it out anywhere though.

dedon

How the hell did Met Eireann miss this.??? No mention of such extremes on the 9 o clock weather. All they said was "heavy showers" pushing in from the south.

What a joke they are. Is it the unskilled civil service employees or are their computers too old.

Sky News managed to forecast it. But our national weather office cant.

What a shambles!!!

brettmirl

burger1979 wrote: »

all of this seems to be happening in dublin, did anyone see or hear anything in navan or close by? i didnt hear a thing last night not even the rain and we had the toilet window open too for fresh air. damn i miss thunder and lighting and seeing shows like that. had a look at the rain chart and it looks like the rain is going to come later on in the afternoon again. we could be all swimming home!!!!!

Pretty bad in Ashbourne from about 4.45am till 5.30ish. Thunder was so bad at one stage, it set off some house/car alarms.

pfk-0p

dedon wrote: »

How the hell did Met Eireann miss this.??? No mention of such extremes on the 9 o clock weather. All they said was "heavy showers" pushing in from the south.

What a joke they are. Is it the unskilled civil service employees or are their computers too old.

Sky News managed to forecast it. But our national weather office cant.

What a shambles!!!

i know, i saw the weather as well, just heavy showers with the possibility of thunder, and as you said on sky the woman was saying from yesterday afternoon that there would be thunderstorms, i think they're all asleep at met eireann.they issued a warning for heavy rain at 9PM, far too late and didn't forecast the severe thunderstorms that sky did. met eireann have just gotten worse with time. i know forecasting isn't an exact sicence but on so many occasions recently they've been completely wrong in their forecasting even at a few hours out

anyway how much more rain/thunderstorms are likely today?

dedon

I know they are a disgrace. Thats civil servants for you. The fact that a UK news channel can forecast better that us is a disgrace

thomasj

dedon wrote: »

I know they are a disgrace. Thats civil servants for you. The fact that a UK news channel can forecast better that us is a disgrace

guys the weather warning was issued at 21:00hrs last night by eireann why it wasnt on RTE last night is anyones guess!

Issued at 01 July 2009 - 21:00
Rain warning
Rain extending northwards across many parts of the country Wednesday night and Thursday will turn heavy or thundery in places, with a possibility of severe downpours and of localised flooding (Leinster and east Munster most at risk). It will then clear away northeastwards again during the day.
Warning valid from 02:00 to 16:00 Thursday 2/7/2009

burger1979

mick_irl wrote: »

Pretty bad in Ashbourne from about 4.45am till 5.30ish. Thunder was so bad at one stage, it set off some house/car alarms.

no didnt hear a thing seriously not a dickybird. i dont know whether to be disappointed or worried.

diegowhite

anyone can tell me where the biggest floods are that still remain in the city? I've an itching for some wakeskating on them

D7

Looks like everyones insurance premiums will be going up again on the basis that there will be so many claims due to everyone note being warned by RTE/Met Office.

Any excuse for Premiums going up and up and up and up............Licence to Print Money.

Does anyone know if there are photos on Boards.ie or Flickr ??????

Any Canoes on Cabra Road ?

Kippure

D7 wrote: »

Looks like everyones insurance premiums will be going up again on the basis that there will be so many claims due to everyone note being warned by RTE/Met Office.

Any excuse for Premiums going up and up and up and up............Licence to Print Money.

Does anyone know if there are photos on Boards.ie or Flickr ??????

Any Canoes on Cabra Road ?

The irish met did give out a very detailed warning.

mike65

I just watched the RTE news report, it ended with the reporter relaying the Met Dept thoughts on further very heavy rain this week - "inconceivable" was the word! :eek:

Sierra Oscar

mike65 wrote: »

I just watched the RTE news report, it ended with the reporter relaying the Met Dept thoughts on further very heavy rain this week - "inconceivable" was the word! :eek:

Yes, I was astonished to hear that.

mike65

I'll be watching the forecast in a few mins, can't wait.

darkman2

I checked numerous websites last night with weather information for the Republic%2

dedon

Kippure wrote: »

The irish met did give out a very detailed warning.

They didnt on the TV one anyway!

darkman2

I checked numerous websites last night with weather information for the Republic and not one had any warning or even a hint of just how bad it did get last night at times. The worst example of this was TV3 weather after the Vincient Brown show....anyone see that? I don't watch it normally but it was the last TV forcast of the evening and nowhere else had any warning whatsoever. But it was a complete joke.....if you actually saw it you would know what I mean.

Boards was the only website yesterday evening at the time this thread was posted that had anything about the extent of the rainfall that would effect the East and the storms aswell that occured (and the commentary was quite good aswell and is always useful from BB, MT etc and the rest:)). Met.ie issuing a warning for an event only 5 hours away at 9pm and failing to show it on the tv broadcasts was just incompetent in my own opinion. Last night could have been worse....luckilly, except for the unlucky few in Dublin, we just got away with traffic chaos this morning.

Sponge Bob

House blown apart by lightning this afternoon, in Connnemara .

Sierra Oscar

Sponge Bob wrote: »

House blown apart by lightning this afternoon, in Connnemara .

My goodness, hopefully no one was injured?

Wella

darkman2 wrote: »

Boards was the only website yesterday evening at the time this thread was posted that had anything about the extent of the rainfall that would effect the East and the storms aswell that occured (and the commentary was quite good aswell and is always useful from BB, MT etc and the rest:)). Met.ie issuing a warning for an event only 5 hours away at 9pm and failing to show it on the tv broadcasts was just incompetent in my own opinion. Last night could have been worse....luckilly, except for the unlucky few in Dublin, we just got away with traffic chaos this morning.

Couldn't agree more

sdanseo

To be pedantic for a sec - it's Met Éireann for the Irish Meteorological folk, and Met Office in the UK. Nothing short of plain wrong to mix those up, keep the cúpla focail going too.

More on topic - there was a warning issued alright but it wasn't exactly comprehensive and came a lot later than Darkman's. The reason is that Met Éireann seem to be somewhere between unwilling to speculate and downright slow. As has been said, their warning didn't even get onto an RTÉ broadcast. There's no better way to show large audiences the forecasts that appear here other than maybe announcing it.

To that end, maybe the admins would consider announcing a topic where there is consensus from a few sources (a good few people here are a dab hand at reading the models and forecasting quite accurately) that extreme weather is approaching? With an audience of 179,000 regsitered and generally 3,000 odd at any one time viewing as guests, a sitewide warning would probably get to many, many more people.

Short of phoning RTÉ, that is. :pac:

lt_cmdr_worf

http://www.galwaynews.ie/8023-lettermore-family-have-lucky-escape-after-lightning-hits-home

Nobody injured in that strike.

sirpsycho

congrats Darkman on the forecast! Another savage forecast from boards.ie :cool:

Sierra Oscar

Lots of lightning strike related power outages in Connaught at the moment.

chris2007

any1 no if dublin is going to get more thunderstorms later in the night?

Lights are flickering here.

Big Dee

Lights flickered all over Dundalk, but unfortunately no lightning showing up on any of the detectors over the east coast.
Slightly off point, but perhaps someone can shed some light on this. Hellboy99 mentioned earlier about the thunder at 6am Thursday morning in Dundalk. At 6.10am I was woken by the loudest 2 bangs (1 or 2 secoinds apart) I have ever heard. I have been in close proximity to lightning strikes before, but these were REALLY loud.
I initially assumed the strike was very close. However as I spoke to different people today, it appears all 30,000 or so inhabitants of Dundalk were woken by the bangs! I spoke to someone who described that they were lifted out of their bed and alarms going off etc, etc. Checking Google Earth they are 2 miles from me. Any time I have seen lightning 2 miles away, you usually hear a rumble (not a bang).
The only explanation I can think of is that a massive fork (or forks) travelled horizontally, thus causing a bang over a wide area.
Any other ideas??

darkman2

Probrably a cloud to ground strike or perhaps a double intra cloud strike. There were quite a few double intra cloud strikes inside there last night. I observed the lightning last night - the strikes were very loud at times - the lightning itself spectacular at times aswell. And not always blue - a bit of purple in there too. Lightning is always full of supprises.

Big Dee

Big Dee wrote: »

At 6.10am I was woken by the loudest 2 bangs (1 or 2 secoinds apart) I have ever heard.

To call it a bang is an understatement, I thought it was a nuke going off, it was the loudest bang of thunder I have ever heard to date (I'm out Toberona direction)

darkman2 wrote: »

And not always blue - a bit of purple in there too.

Seen the same here, there was a lot of purple in it.

rhonin

We got a nice storm at 3am which lasted for almost an hour. Some nice lightening and very heavy rain.

Big Dee

hellboy99 wrote: »

To call it a bang is an understatement, I thought it was a nuke going off, it was the loudest bang of thunder I have ever heard to date (I'm out Toberona direction)

Totally agree hellboy99. Even the great storms of 85 and 86, which I recall as a young fella, never produced anything like this. I also remember being about 200ft from a tree that was hit by a fork and the explosion the other night was louder! Toberona is 2.1 miles NW of my location but it appears everyone I speak to within a 2 mile radius in any direction was woken by it!
STRANGE!

Big Dee

Big Dee wrote: »

Even the great storms of 85 and 86, which I recall as a young fella, never produced anything like this.

Agree with you on that, I know a few people up lisdoo direction and they were woke up by it too. Would love to know if it was a ground strike and where.

M.T. Cranium

Just in case this factoid is not generally known, the time interval between when you see lightning and hear thunder can tell you how far away the bolt was (whether it is vertical or above your head, you have to figure out from the visuals). The rule is, for every three seconds, the bolt is one km away from you. (Used to be, for every five seconds, one mile away).

I know you don't get as many storms there as I used to get when I lived near Toronto (now on the west coast where storms are rare), but we would routinely use this rule in the evenings especially when you can see the lightning (daytime, sometimes you don't see the lightning unless you were set up looking for it, or you're very close). I recall that on the average we would start to hear the thunder when the separation was about 30 seconds (six miles or 10 kms), before that, it was just the odd distant flicker of lightning, no sound of thunder yet. Thunder carries quite well with the wind sometimes so if the low level winds are against the direction of the cell the thunder may not be heard so early on.

Worst storm I ever experienced came through in the early morning hours (July 15, 1995) where I was then living in a place called Lakefield in Ontario, it's about two hours drive northeast of Toronto. It was a very warm night and I was still up reading at 0230, became aware of lightning off to the west, and could then see the outline of a massive storm with the lightning which was quite continuous. However, could not hear thunder until about 0245, and realized that the storm was then about 12 kms away. When it came in, the thunder and lightning were continuous. I had heard about this in the American midwest, tornado alley, but even the worst storms I had been through in Ontario were nothing like this, you might get 10 strikes a minute, but this just kept up constantly and it was very difficult to separate the different strikes from their thunder, although like you're reporting about the Dublin storm, we had a few loud explosions with lightning simultaneous. This storm produced a tornado that was just dying out as it reached our location, so we were at that point where the tornado is lifting off the ground. Then about 0320, it all shifted off to the southeast and by 0340 it was back to distant lightning, no thunder. Quite a scary experience to watch through the windows (should have been in the basement really).

Where I live now, sometimes there is only one thunderstorm all summer (we tend to get weak ones in the other seasons) and one year I remember all it did was to produce one massive bolt and loud thunder, nothing else, just thirty seconds of heavy raindrops falling one at a time, and all the dogs in the city howling at the thing. Seems that dogs are the same the world over.

bennyob

here is a vid from the other night.....pretty cool

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAjmPlnGaAY

monster1

A lot of thunder and lightning right over me now.:)

chris2007

were r u ?

monster1

Roscommon