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MET ÉIREANN HAS defended its weather warning system after many questioned the speed of the organisation’s response to last night’s storm, which caused flooding and damage in the west and south of the country.
Winds speeds reached between 100 kilometres per hour and 177 kilometres per hour in some areas, with hundreds of homes left without power.
Last night, people took to Twitter to ask why Met Éireann had only issued an orange wind warning for Galway and Mayo at 8pm – with the warning set to take effect only an hour later at 9pm.
Other people pointed out that the storm was already causing damage in the region before the predicted weather had hit.
The Mayor of Galway of City Council, Mike Cubbard, was critical of what he said was a sluggish response from Met Éireann.
Council crews, he told TheJournal.ie, were “caught on the hop because the warning only came from Met Éireann at 8pm”.
“Because it was issued so late we were chasing our tails a bit,” he said.
Galway city, especially in the docklands and Salthill area, is particularly prone to flooding and storms have caused significant damage in recent years.
Joan Blackburn, a meteorologist in Met Éireann, said that warnings were issued long before the storm hit.
“You must bear in mind that warnings can be updated at any hour,” she said.
“There was a warning in place for a full 24 hours from the day before,” Blackburn added. “It specifically said that in coast areas of the south and the west that winds could be higher.”
On Tuesday morning, Met Éireann issued a yellow wind warning for Ireland – valid from 12pm on Wednesday until midnight.
It warned of “southeast winds, later veering southerly” and said that it “will gust 90-110km/h on Wednesday, strongest in coastal areas”.
At 10am on Wednesday, the warning was extended until 3am on Thursday. Yesterday afternoon, a Status Orange warning was issued for Cork.
The storm, dubbed Storm Elsa by the Portuguese weather service, was not given a name by Met Éireann.
It partners with the UK Met Office and the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute to label storms.
In Ireland, a storm is named by a forecaster when orange or red level winds are expected to impact over a wide land area. However, orange or red level gusts can occur in exposed areas without the event being named.
Met Éireann updates weather warnings as it receives new information, using three colour codes of increasing levels of severity – yellow, orange and red.
The organisation issues a Status Yellow wind warning for “widespread gusts” between 90 kilometres per hour and 110 kilometres per hour, which can be upgraded to Status Orange if wind speeds reach between 110 and 130 kilometres per hour.
Blackburn encouraged people – especially local council staff – to contact the Met Éireann office if they had any questions or wanted more information.
She said that the warning was issued once wind speeds reached Status Orange levels.
“The forecast will always be updated. Warnings will always be updated. We try to issue them timely,” she said.
“It was a pretty robust warning,” she added.
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People were complaining when there was too much of a warning previously, now when they didn’t heed the warning, they claim there wasn’t enough emphasis.
We had warnings 24 hours before the worst of the weather yesterday. Met Eireann cant be expected to allow for peoples ignorance
@thomas patrick: I agree. You only have to look at yesterday’s comments in the Journal article, when it was brought to people’s attention. “It’s winter ffs” etc.
@thomas patrick: perhaps they were different people complaining!
And there lies the problem. The vast majority of people are thick idiоts. They complain when they notice the warnings that Met Éireann gives too many of them. Then, when they fail to notice them, they complain that Met Éireann doesn’t give enough. And, all of that is on top of the fact that they haven’t a clue what the warnings actually mean even though there’s a guide on their website. Stuрid, stuрid people.
@Brian Ó Dálaigh: have you followed people through you’re “thick idiots” test or taken a bunch of comments from several thick idiots at different stages and then combined the data and attributed it to a bunch of thick idiots which make up most of the population?
@Tommy C: fair point. It’s think idiots like Lar above who are most vocal give the rest of us a bad name. I think and hope that the vast majority of people respect and appreciate the good work done by Met Éireann.
@Brian Ó Dálaigh: There is clearly a problem with the whole warning system – when it does not achieve it’s actual purpose.
I am one of those dissenting voices that complains about the met eireann system. It is my firm belief that the system is not actually operated properly.
In 2014 when the system was rolled out – the intital intention was good. A simple storm warning system that is colour coded and coincides with a European wide easy to understand system. Summarised as follows
Yellow warning – Be aware – Orange Warning – Be Alert – Red Warning – Take Action
If these were followed – then a Red Warning should absolutely be issued in advance of yesterday evenings storm as people should have been told to take action. Changing from a Yellow to orange at 8pm is not good enough.
Met Eireann have also created a much more confusing system by adding in all sorts of variations as to what constitutes a warning. So we can have a yello wind warning , a yellow rain warning , A yellow Telp warning etc etc etc – this is becasue of instead of it being a storm warning as originally intended – they became all busy body and jobsworth and overly complicated a simple system – once they had added in all the additional to variations to what constitutes a yellow warning – the end result is they issue warnings ona weekly basis now. So the public ( or thick idiots ) as you describe them- become immune from the over use , too many warnings – even calling them warnings all the time loses it’s effect – and then we have the situation (like yesterday ) when the boy who cried wolf effect also kicks in – because when a real case that requires a real warning comes along – then people ( even the not so thick idiots among us ) just think- is this REALLY a warning that I should pay heed to ?
So again , I think Met Eireann need to take a look at the Warning system , narrow it back to storm warning as originally intended instead of issuing warnings every second day – and just admit that the current mess IS NOT FIT FOR PURPOSE.
@Dave Hammond:
This is the original communication to the public about the new warning system back in 2014. Met Eireann have a much much much wider ‘menu’ of conditions now which results in weather warnings being issued too frequently IMO. Stick to Stormy Weather Warnings and stop issuing Yellow WARNINGS every week would be a better system.
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/environment/colour-coded-weather-warnings-1.1646330
@Dave Hammond: except, it’s not a system in operation since 2014. It was rolled out to the public in 2014, but was used by meteorologists for years before. I’ll say it again – it’s the public’s fault for not reading up on the system, and not MÉ or the system itself. E.g. a yellow alert wind warning, if you follow the system, is designed to warn those who work up trees, on cranes, on sides of mountains, high up on the exterior of buildings, etc. So many here will say “ah shur it’s only a breeze”. Yes, for you on the ground it’s only a breeze. That’s the whole frickin point. Yellow means conditions are not ideal, but some people may need to take an extra bit of caution, not that MÉ is telling you to panic. The media are the prime culprits, and you use a media article as evidence? Wow.
@Brian Ó Dálaigh: ah yeah blame the media – i used that article from 2014 to illustrate the narrative – that is the year Met Eireann adopted the warning system for Ireland and clearly shows the narrative communicated to the public at the time. It was clear and easy to understand and one of the main problems with the way the use the system is they have broadened what constitutes a yellow warning now to mean they are issuing warnings too frequently. I am not sure what bit of that you seem to have difficulty understanding. Issuing an orange warning at 8 pm and hour before is also poor management by them, they are not immune from criticism when they do a bad job
@Dave Hammond: some people don’t half like mouthing off
The lads cant win. Irish people just live a moan.
Oh my god .How can you keep people happy .The give out when their is to much warnings .When you know that a storm is on the way you would be organised for it .grow up and stop looking to make a argument .
To the people who lost their cars around salthill, ye were warned long before 8pm. You just didn’t read the warning or maybe you are one of those wierdos who doesn’t read the news. Either way, no sympathy
Cathal nolan from Midland weather was 100% correct.
@Mac Dara Powell: has his own satellites does he? All the weather images come from the same source!
@Johnny Rotten: he was spot on though. Called red warning for west coast
@Johnny Rotten: I never mentioned satellites I just said he called it right which he did and had mentioned a red warning 24 hours before it had reached landfall.
@Mac Dara Powell: The same guy who predicted a red warning for the south of Ireland last Friday, when all that occurred was a stiff breeze that didn’t even warrant a warning of any description from Met Eireann ? A blowhard amateur who should leave it to the professionals.
@Mac Dara Powell:
His information came from met eireann
@Tommy Roche: A stiff breeze down south last Friday? An absolute lie.
I wonder how did people survive pre warnings??
Utter shambles from met Éireann. For those saying that they can’t win and people complain when their warnings don’t end up being as severe as they say, it further proves the point that they’re not up to scratch.
Fact is that last night a yellow warning for wind was in place. This ended up being close to red in Galway and they upgraded it to orange after it had happened.
Rarely get it right. They’re not fit for purpose.
@Seán C: absolutely agree .. I live in east Galway and it was full on storm force winds by 6pm … is was something equivalent Hurricane Ophelia 2 yrs ago .. trees were down , power cuts etc and and all this going from about 5pm … by 9pm when Orange Warning came into force it was actually calming down ..
Met Éireann certainly got it wrong for Galway yesterday … there whole emphasis on earlier warnings was for South of the Country … there no indications things would be so bad on west coast …
In fairness met eireann did say the weather would be stormy and gave heavy rain. Alot if people were on giving out about the warnings and how it cost them on their businesses. This time I was surprised at how much worse the storm was to the previous storms of late….. that was a nasty bad storm with awful rain. The worst this year in tipperary.
Not even a breeze in Dublin. They are starting to lose all credibility…
@Lar Meyler: It was pretty wild up the road in Meath in fairness – they weren’t far wrong
@Lar Meyler: plenty of wind and rain in Dublin yesterday. https://www.met.ie/latest-reports/recent-rainfall-radar/24-hour-rainfall-radar
@Lar Meyler: Too cool to admit there was wind in your location
@Lar Meyler: don’t know what part of Dublin you are in but it was pretty bad in Tallaght so all credibility ain’t lost here
@Happy entertainment: It was raining folk, that’s it. Not even a plant pot or chair over turned here unlike last week.
@Lar Meyler: Not sure where in Dublin you are but there was heavy winds in the city centre.
@Lar Meyler: what?! Were you not outside yesterday? The wind was mad fierce. Nearly knocked me over a few times in Dublin, but I am pretty light tbf
@Lar Meyler: agree 100 per cent.
In fairness I agree that people should not be complaining about met eireann as most give out about the warnings of laugh at the. Although the weather was much worse than I thought it would be here in tipperary yesterday. The news was a bit less concerned that some of the previous storms we have experienced.
Storm warnings were given. If they upgraded it would it have downgraded the damage. No. People like to criticise.
@Brian: and why should they not be criticised Brian – they are a taxpayer funded service and have ONE JOB – any of us have to take constructive criticism if we get stuff wrong in our line of work – they are no different – they made a boll*x of that warning system since they extended what qualifies as a ‘warning’ and wonder why people are becoming immune to it – then they issue an Orange Warning at 8PM for a storm hitting at 9pm ? ONE JOB mate – there is nothing wrong with people expecting a better service or wanting accountability – maybe ‘people like to criticize because we pay taxes up the wazoo for services in this country which couldn’t organise a pi** up in a brewery. Is it really any wonder people like to criticize ? – have you been paying attention to the shambles of most public services in ireland ????????.
@Dave Hammond:
And you are Mr perfect
@Dave Hammond: . I suppose if it was that easy everybody would be a weatherman. I
@Jim O Connor: childish comment.
Way too many false alarms. Like the boy who called wolf. Several red alarms turned out to be not much more than a strong breeze. The yellow warning issued the last few days therefore largely ignored by the media and general public.
Damned if they do, damned if they don’t.
Cant fix stupid either!
@Mundo79: you can’t fix stupid , Met Eireann are not beyond criticism though – and comments saying ‘ah sure look when they gave the wrong level of threat last time people complained – is completely missing the point . They have one job , they are taxpayer funded , and they insist on operating the whole warning system incorrectly – by using ‘weather warnings’ on such a frequent basis -they have diliuted the effect and usefulness – then to only give an orange warning at 8pm when a storm hit at 9 – thats not them being unfairly criticised – thats them being borderline incompetent at the ONE JOB they are needed for – go back and watch the 6 one news and weather last night if you have it recorded and tell me with a straight face they didn’t make a dogs dinner of their warning system.
Said nothing about limerick getting it and it was very bad here
I wonder how people survived pre warnings????
I distinctly remember them warning drivers to exercise extreme caution. Makes me inclined to ask what you do when driving on a road that might be mined – exercise super-extreme uttermost ultra-caution? You start to run out of adjectives.
Why is it that whenever any institution in this place messes up they just deny deny deny. It’s just mental carry on. Wtf is wrong with got it wrong, we’re sorry??
Met office f#cks up again. They should all be sacked for gross incompetence.
What does people think of that
I think myself it should be left to the local authorities to put the warnings out in donegal might get a warning from Cork or donegal might get a warning from someone else
have your say