A 500ft tornado in Donegal?!

What is the deal with Irish weather lately? Two weeks ago there was a tornado in Bray (yes, seriously), Met Eireann has pretty much predicted the worst rain ever for the next two days and yesterday? Yesterday there was a 500ft twister in Donegal, apparently…

The Irish Independent reports that people in Donegal were shocked yesterday when they spotted a 500ft tornado speeding across a remote area of the county.

Okay, so we have tornadoes, we’ve endured that epic ice age of 2010, we have the prediction of mass flooding over the next two days…what’s next? A volcano erupting in Stephen’s Green? Who knows?

Anyway Jason McGibney, a wind-farm technician from Letterkenny, spotted the tornado and did the smart thing – he disregarded his own safety and instead whipped out his camera phone and started recording that bad boy. What a hero.

“It was amazing to see it. It lasted for about 15 minutes and moved slowly across the ground,” said Mr McGibney.

“It must have been at least 500ft tall and it was an awesome sight. It touched the ground at one stage and caused a bit of damage but thankfully it wasn’t near any houses,” he added.

Eh…if we were in Donegal we’d be seriously battening down our hatches right about now…

While no tornadoes have been predicted for the rest of the country, we are expected to get a battering today in terms of rain – actually, a month’s worth of it is going to fall within the next 24hrs if Met Eireann are to be believed.

According to weather forecasters, 25 to 30mm of rain will pour down between today and tomorrow. While there’s no rain in Dublin just yet, there are some ominous clouds and a wind picking up.

The good news is that the rain will be a lot less than the amount which caused some freak flooding in Dublin last October.

Last night, Dublin City Council said that they are fully prepared if anymore freak flooding should happen within the next two days and they also have a stock of sandbags on standby for strategic employment if the worst should happen.

So let's just hope we don't get hit with a tornado, because we're pretty sure sandbags wouldn't really help us out in that scenario...