If you’re heading out this morning advice is to take care.
After a wet and windy night, there’s quite a bit of surface water about while river levels locally are high.
Gardai in both counties say no issues have been reported to them. While the ESB has no major outages recorded.
But it looks like the current spell’s far from over – Alan O’Reilly of CarlowWeather.com sums up what we can expect saying “Very wet and very windy this morning and that will continue unfortunately for a good length today so the strong winds in Carlow and Kilkenny will continue through the morning and only really very slowly start to ease later in the afternoon and unfortunately the heavy rain will also continue, there will be some breaks in the rain where it may ease for a little while but unfortunately the heavy rain will continue in most of Carlow and Kilkenny through today with the risk of flooding increasing”.
River levels are high across both counties and Mr O’Reilly says that’s set to continue, noting “Unfortunately it will continue to rise, we have another probably 20 to 30, maybe even 40 mm to fall in some areas so areas prone to flooding that are seeing high water levels should be on high alert because unfortunately they will continue to rise and it’ll really be tomorrow before the rain eases”.
As for the main issue today, he notes “I think this morning it’s the combination of the wind and the rain so if you do need to be out there take great care but I think flooding will become the bigger issue as we head into tomorrow especially in parts of South Kilkenny and South Carlow”.
The county councils locally have plans in place, Director of Services with Kilkenny’s local authority Tim Butler says “There’s a yellow weather warning out at the moment which will always lead to a lot of surface water on roads and we’ll be advising people that have to take a necessary journey to take care and to not drive through any floods that they’re unsure of, the river levels are quite high at the moment in both in Kilkenny City and down along the Nore and on the Barrow in Carlow, Bagenalstown and on down into Graignamangh so if there’s signifiant rainfall over the next 24 hours you could see flooding at different areas, particularly we’re worried about Graignamangh over the next two days or so and in Thomastown and Inistioge but you could get debris or anything caught in a bridge that might cause you trouble as well so that’s why we’re advising people that if they’re aware that they normally flood when there’s heavy rainfall that they should be prepared because we do think with the river levels so high that any rainfall at all will have a significant impact”.
He adds “We do expect quite significant rain in the south of the county, while Kilkenny is in yellow weather warning the south west Kerry, Cork and Waterford and Tipperary are in an orange weather warning so you could have significant rain in the south of the county as well”.
Sandbags are available since last weekend across the county at the following points:
- KILKENNY CITY Council Machinery Yard, Gaol Road
- CASTLECOMER Outside the Donaguile Council Depot
- FRESHFORD The Square
- BALLYRAGGETT at the bottle banks
- GOWRAN outside the Woodquarter Council Depot
- JOHNSTOWN outside the Johnstown Council Depot
- CALLAN at Council Depot and Area Office
- GRAIGUENAMANAGH at Council Depot and Bridge in Graiguenamanagh
- THOMASTOWN at Area Office and Old Fire Station, Maudlin Street
- INISTIOGE Riverside Park
- BENNETTSBRIDGE Community Centre
- TULLAGHER Council Depot
- NEWRATH Council Depot
- MOONCOIN opposite Royal Oak in Rathkieran
Meanwhile, due to the current adverse weather conditions Carlow County Council wish to announce that Powerstown Civic Amenity Site will remain closed today, Tuesday 23rd February.
