LAST UPDATE | 18 Sep 2023

MET ÉIREANN HAS issued a yellow weather warning for 11 counties in the south, west and the midlands as the National Ploughing Championships are due to get underway.

The weather service issued the warning today for Counties Clare, Cork, Kerry, Limerick, Tipperary and Donegal, as well as all of Connacht. A separate wind warning for Kerry and the west of Galway has also been issued.

The rain warning comes into effect at midnight tonight, and is set to last until Wednesday morning at 6am. The three-day Ploughing kicks off tomorrow and will run until Thursday. The Ploughing is taking place at Ratheniska, Co Laois, which is not one of the counties affected by the warning.

According to Met Éireann, spells of rain will be heavy and persistent at times giving accumulative totals of 30 to 60mm, which will be locally higher on hills.

The rain is due to ease off for a period in many parts during the day tomorrow, with heavy spells set to return tomorrow evening and night.

Hundreds of thousands of people are expected to pass through the gates of the Ploughing championships over the three days.

Earlier, Met Éireann forecast wet and windy conditions for tomorrow i Leinster, with a mix of cloudy spells and patchy rain. A mixture of wet conditions with gusts and brighter spells are also forecast for the remainder of the week.

Speaking today on Morning Ireland, assistant managing director of the National Ploughing Championships Anna Marie McHugh advised attendees to prepare for the weather.

“Well we often try to avoid saying this, bit it is ploughing weather,” she said.

“So that means the wellies and the raincoat and once you have that you’re kitted out and you’re ready for what’s ahead.”

McHugh said organisers have prepared for the weather, with measures in place to ensure that everything runs smoothly.

“We’ve steel tracking right through the whole exhibition. We have I think about 37 kilometres of steel tracking,” she said.

And we’ve even put more in the car parks over the recent days. So we’re well ready, but it is whether the ground is wet. And you know there’s no place for the runners this year unfortunately.

McHugh said that organisers were expecting large crowds, and that just short of 300,000 people attended over the three days last year.

“Now we’d two great days but then the third day was very wet as well. So people are well used to that at the ploughing,” she said.

“But what we’re saying to people in as far as possible, make a little bit more effort to do things like carpool. The less cars that are in circulation…  it’ll be all the better for the ground.

And also if people were kind of half thinking of getting the train why not get it, the shuttle is fantastic from the train stations around the site. So little things like that would make a huge help.

What to expect

While the actual ploughing championships themselves form part of the festival, the three days have morphed over the years into a wide-scale celebration of rural life, with a wide range of shows, events, demonstrations, musical performances and competitions taking place. 

McHugh said people very rarely get to see and do all they have planned, as they get distracted by the wide variety of events on offer.

“The next thing you just get waylaid because you meet somebody like yourself or other celebrities,” she said.

Or you’ll see some debate, or you’ll see a cookery demonstration, or you’ll see some lovely livestock. And you’ll just suddenly find you’re half five in the evening and you still haven’t seen the things you want to see.

McHugh said also that that attendees were being asked “to do what they can for sustainability”.

“We have to be very conscientious of that. We’re very conscious of our footprint. That’s why we try to encourage people to take the bus, take the train and reduce the the number of cars in the road,” she said.