A monsoon in the West

STORM Desmond that raged from last Friday evening through to the early hours of Sunday morning, brought one of the most concentrated periods of rainfall to the West of Ireland since records began.

The rainfall total for the Met Éireann station in Claremorris, South Mayo for the first seven days of December is already at the 131.8mms. mark (5.2 inches) with the vast bulk of that falling in the 36 hour period from Friday night through to late Saturday night.

Farmers and householders across the region have said that the severity of the flooding since last Friday was worse than the last major flood event to hit the region in November 2009.

All rivers across the county have burst their banks with tens of thousands of hectares of land under water – the worst affected areas are the Shannon Callows, the Suck catchment including Ballinalsoe, parts of South Galway, Portumna and the Abbert River catchment area in North Galway.

Desmond – only officially christened by Met. Éireann and the UK Met. Office through the course of Thursday last – left its mark with the amount of rainfall deposited, mostly in the western half of the country.

The trailing tail of the storm was particularly slow moving – stalled by high pressure over continental Europe – leaving a frontal system, containing all the moisture, hanging over Ireland.

Abbeyknockmoy weather man, Brendan Geraghty, collected almost three inches of rain (2.98 or 75.7mms.) from Friday evening last to Sunday morning.

“Over this period of time it was probably one of our most concentrated bursts of rainfall. That is the equivalent of every acre of land being pounded with 300 tonnes of water over that short period of time,” said Brendan Geraghty.

During the last big flood event in November, 2009, Brendan Geraghty, recorded 12.67 inches of rainfall with 4.42 inches of that coming in a three day period from Nov. 17 to 19.

In the November just gone by, the Abbeyknockmoy man recorded 8.18 inches of rainfall (208mms.), making it our wettest month of the year so far.

“The problem with last Saturday’s rainfall was that it had nowhere to go. Land was already saturated, the rivers were swollen and I can never remember the callows of the Abbert River being as flooded before,” said Brendan Geraghty.

If December continues on with its wet trend, then 2015 will turn out to be a very wet year only being ‘saved’ by four dry months – February (2.27 inches, 58mms.), April (2.46 inches, 62mms.), June (1.54 inches, 39mms.) and October (2.26 inches, 57mms.).

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.