The weather is set to improve this week after several incidents of flooding from heavy showers over the weekend on the back of the wettest July ever recorded by Met Éireann.
Flash flooding caused damage to more than a dozen homes in the Castle Court Estate in Clontarf, Dublin while residents in an estate in Bettystown, Co Meath were hit by floods that damaged property and cause power blackouts.
Met Éireann meteorologist Matthew Martin said although there will be some showers this week, there will be an improvement on recent conditions, with temperatures forecast to hit the mid-20s on Thursday.
“Wednesday and Thursday will feel warm and humid, and there will be some sunshine, particularly during the second half of the day on Wednesday and during Thursday,” he said.
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“For the bank holiday Monday, it’s going to start dry and we’re going to have some kind of rain pushing up over the country during the afternoon and evening, but nothing too heavy is forecast.
“Then for Tuesday overall lots of dry weather, especially across the northern half of the country with some sunny spells and then for Wednesday and Thursday it looks like it’s going to actually turn warm.”
He said Wednesday and Thursday should feature “lots of dry weather and some warm sunshine coming through, we could get temperatures, perhaps up to 25 or 26 degrees on Thursday”.
However, the warm spell is set to be short-lived with temperatures expected to revert to average or below average on Friday and for the weekend, with more unsettled conditions expected.
“There could be more heavy rain next Saturday perhaps,” he said, adding that it was too far away to say for certain.
Flash flooding
In Clontarf, a total of 17 homes and apartments were evacuated on Saturday, and an underground car park with about 15 cars inside was flooded. One man was taken to hospital, Dublin Fire Brigade said.
A “neighbour of 40 years” of those affected by the flooding, who did not want to be named, said the situation is “just horrendous”. The man said he left his house at 8.25am on Saturday and by the time he returned the area was covered with water.
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“There was a river basically about a metre high, and I couldn’t drive, I had to get out and I walked up to my house through the whole thing. It was a river, it wasn’t from the rain, it was obviously a river burst its bank, and there’s a river behind the houses,” the neighbour said.
However, he said nobody knows what caused the flooding as of yet. He said “an awful lot of people are devastated today”.
The damage in the apartment complex goes up as high as the third floor, the neighbour said, and electricity has been shut off in the building. “It’s very sad for the people ... We have a lot of elderly neighbours,” he said.
One of his neighbours had bought a new car in recent weeks, which was destroyed by the water, and a majority of the other cars caught in the flooding had electrics damaged. “Some people in the apartments, this is their second time to lose a car,” he said, recalling previous flooding some 13 years ago in the estate.
“It went through the front door, right through the house, and out the back door. People were telling me when they got home, their fridges were floating around the place.”
