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08th Feb 2020

Met Éireann warns of several days of flooding and snowfall following Storm Ciara

Rory Cashin

storm ciara

More bad weather will arrive almost the second the storm passes over the country.

Not long after issuing an upgraded status orange wind warning for the entire country to go with the pre-existing three weather warnings already in place, Met Éireann has released an updated meteorologist’s commentary for Storm Ciara and the weather we can expect once the storm has passed by.

Giving more detail on the aforementioned wind warnings, Evelyn Cusack, head of the Forecast Division, and Eoin Sherlock, head of the Flood Forecast Division, stated that “winds will reach gale to strong gale force in strength with damaging gusts likely.

“These gusts will affect parts of the country not normally impacted by such strong winds. Gusts will typically range between 100-130 km/h but they may exceed 140 km/h locally.”

Storm Ciara is also set to bring “very wet conditions with localised flooding possible as intense falls of rain spread across the country with some embedded thunderstorm activity” but even once the storm has passed, the combination of Spring Tides, high seas and extremely windy conditions over the next few days will see “a significant risk of coastal flooding especially along northwestern and western coasts. This risk will persist into the middle of the coming week.”

Additionally, once Storm Ciara has passed over Ireland, it will be replaced by much colder winds, which will likely result in scattered snow on Sunday night, and more as the week goes on:

“The risk of snowfall increases as we move into the coming week. While snow showers may occur anywhere they will occur chiefly in parts of the north and west.”

Meanwhile, Met Eireann has also issued a status red gale warning on coastal waters, describing the advisory as follows:

“South to southwest gales or strong gales will develop on all Irish coastal waters and on the Irish Sea today. Winds reaching storm force 10 on coastal waters from Slyne Head to Erris Head to Malin Head and possibly touching violent storm force 11 for a time this afternoon.”

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