Climate Crisis

Flooding in Down and Louth: How the floods occurred

Many weather stations countrywide have recorded normal year’s rainfall already, with November and December traditionally being two of our wettest months

Sugar Island in Newry Town, Co Down, which has been swamped after the canal burst its banks amid heavy rainfall. Photograph: Brian Lawless/PA
Sugar Island in Newry Town, Co Down, which has been swamped after the canal burst its banks amid heavy rainfall. Photograph: Brian Lawless/PA
Alan O'Reilly
Sat Nov 04 2023 - 06:00

After Babet and before Ciarán there was a slow-moving weather front that brought intense rainfall into the northeast of Ireland with Louth, Down and Armagh seeing a month’s rainfall in under 36 hours.

The UK Met Office, which manages weather warnings for Northern Ireland, issued an amber (orange) alert for rainfall on Monday from 8pm up to 9am on Tuesday.

The warning cautioned that “fast flowing or deep floodwater is possible, causing a danger to life. Extensive flooding of homes and businesses is possible. Communities could be completely cut off by floodwater, perhaps for days.”

The Met Office’s warning included a map clearly showing the affected area from Belfast to the Co Louth Border.

READ MORE

The weather models on Monday showed more than 80mm was possible on the Mourne Mountains, with in excess of 60mm on the Cooley Mountains.

Met Éireann issued a yellow warning for Louth and Monaghan at 5pm on Monday to cover up to 5am Tuesday for “heavy or thundery rain at times” with “localised flooding and dangerous travel conditions”.

A clean up operation is underway in Carlingford, Co Louth after the town suffered from flooding.

Heavy rain started to hit the northeast by Monday evening with a station near Dundalk recording 41mm by midnight. The heavy rain continued overnight into Tuesday with another 44mm by 10am.

Meanwhile, a station over the Border on the other side of Carlingford Lough at Killowen, Co Down, recorded 72mm in 24 hours to Tuesday morning with more than 100mm in 36 hours. This intense rainfall coincided with high tides on Monday night, compounding the problems. The month’s rainfall came on top of land and mountains that had already reached the average annual rainfall for a full year. Water was running down the Mourne and Cooley mountains.

This resulted in rivers like the Flurry bursting its banks along with the canal in Newry city. By Tuesday morning images emerged of homes and businesses flooded from Newry city to many parts of the Cooley Peninsula.

While business owners had been alerted and rushed to deploy sandbags to hold back the water at the door, they could then only stand by and watch helplessly as it gushed up through the floors of premises.

The M1 road outside Newry was flooded on both sides of the dual carriageway, causing traffic problems. Locals reported many local routes were badly damaged with sections washed away, similar to the damage seen in Cork and Waterford only two weeks ago.

Flooding on Main Street in Midleton, Co Cork, caused by Storm Babet. Video: Orlagh Farmer

A bridge at Riverstown on the Cooley Peninsula was also badly damaged, with large sections washed away and locals wondering about the integrity of other local crossings.

As many weather stations across the island have now already recorded their normal year’s rainfall, we head into the last two months of the year with saturated land and high water levels, meaning any further heavy rainfall could result in more of these awful flooding incidents.

We escaped the worst of Storm Ciarán and thankfully the worst of Storm Domingos is also staying south of us, but November and December are two of our wettest months so I fear Government Ministers will be standing next to more flood waters before 2023 is out.