Met Éireann issues orange level weather warning with Storm Babet on the way

Met Éireann has issued a new set of weather warnings with Storm Babet set to impact the country on Tuesday and Wednesday.

An orange rain warning has been issued for counties Cork, Kerry and Waterford from Tuesday at 6am to Wednesday at 6am with the possibility of localised flooding and wave overtopping.

A status yellow rain warning will be in place for Clare, Kerry, Limerick, Tipperary, Kilkenny and Wexford at that time too with a status yellow rain warning for all of Connacht from noon on Tuesday to noon on Wednesday.

Storm Babet is the second named storm of the season and was identified by the UK Met Office.

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It will last from Wednesday to Saturday, the Met Office said, and is expected to cause flooding, power cuts and travel disruption.

Yellow severe weather warnings have been issued across the four days for a vast swathe of the UK, covering much of Scotland, eastern Northern Ireland, the northeast of England, Yorkshire, the East Midlands and East Anglia.

As much as 150mm to 200mm of rain is expected to fall on central and eastern areas of Scotland and there is a possibility of 110km/h gale-force winds affecting northern parts of the UK, forecasters warned.

Met Éireann forecaster Deirdre Lowe said England and Scotland will be at the centre of the storm, but Ireland will also be directly impacted.

Rainfall levels will be “very bad” on Tuesday especially in the south-west and rain and high winds will continue into Wednesday.

There is a possibility that more weather warnings will be announced as the storm comes closer, she said.

“Ireland is going to get some very heavy rain. We are looking at four times the normal rainfall for the week with strong winds.”

The weather is set to become notably more unsettled as autumn finally sets in following an extraordinarily mild October to date with temperatures well above average for the time of year. The Phoenix Park in Dublin is on course to record the mildest October on record. The average temperatures so far this month has been 13.9 degrees, the monthly norm is 10.2 degrees.

This makes this October warmer on average than June where the mean temperature for that month is 13.5 degrees.

At Oak Park in Co Carlow the average temperature to date this month is 13.5 degrees compared to the monthly norm which is 10.1.

Met Éireann weather stations along the east coast are all showing similar values.