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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.”
Met Éireann / TwitterWarnings for wind and rain tomorrow Wednesday 18th December 2019. pic.twitter.com/DwcSkBc2Bp
— Met Éireann (@MetEireann) December 17, 2019
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.
PictureDiaryGalway / TwitterJ*sus, it got even worse after that (after the last video I posted). Poor people coming out of the cinema to discover their cars in flooded car park. #StormElsa #Salthill #Galway @endacunningham @declanvarley @deric_tv @villagesalthill pic.twitter.com/EOMyQUljBe
— PictureDiaryGalway (@PicDiaryGalway) December 18, 2019
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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Half a million. they could get prisoners to do it for free if the justice system was worth anything.
@Brendan Hughes: it would cost in excess of €500k to put measures in place to ensure the prisoners were properly supervised and didn’t do a runner!
@Brendan Hughes: prisoners would go to court saying it’s not fair and want to be compensated for their time…courts and lawyers would cost millions…and then it could be a shocking job
@Brendan Hughes: why prisoners.. Social welfare claims…for generations can help
@Brendan Hughes: they might smoke the weeds.
@Ajax Penumbra: and you came up with that number using how many fingers
@Brendan Hughes: top marks. Bring in welfare for work & probation/ early release categories.
We are now at historic low unemployment level, so the residual, probably disengaged element , need to be drawn into formal work disciplines to get them into action. Doesn’t have to be chain gangs style either, but maybe even that should be considered for recidivist criminal convicts.
Lots of rehabilitation to be achieved by such reforms, apart from beneficial community services.
so , no directives regarding the kind of weedkillers used?
@Ixtrix Net: https://edition.cnn.com/2018/08/10/health/monsanto-johnson-trial-verdict/index.html
It all contains glyphosate with its side effects.
Let’s hope they don’t use any RoundUp
@⚡ Seánie ⚡:
Don’t hold your breath.
Alternative please?
@Patrick Nolan: How about a herd of Shetland ponies left loose on the city
@Tweety McTweeter:
Elephants have a bigger appetite.
@Patrick Nolan: horticultural vinegar
@Michael Henvey:
Roundup is a residual spray, it would not need to be repeated for about 6 weeks (depending on weather) and is rainfast (shower proof) in about 1 hour.
Horticultural vinegar needs at least 4-5 hours to absorb, might not work on “waxy” leave weeds and would need to be re-applied after 2-3 weeks.
Bottom line your alternative will cost at least twice as much to do half the job.
@⚡ Seánie ⚡:
I use Gallop.!
Seems grand and a value for money tender. are we supposed to be outraged?
@Gulliver Foyle: yes considering bees are dying out
Weeds no longer a mark down with Tidy Towns committee
@Quentin Moriarty: Turns out bees need Dandelions as they flower early and are full of nectar…
@TamuMassif2019: better to see a dandelion than an empty snack box on the path
@Quentin Moriarty: You see anything on footpaths now including human excrement…
No matter how careful they are with spraying, it will more than likely affect the honey bee population. Studies have found that the herbicide can interfere with the bees causing infection and subsequent reduction in the bee population. It’s probably more costly to remove the weeds manually, but what price continuation of healthy pollinating species.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/09/common-weed-killer-believed-harmless-animals-may-be-harming-bees-worldwide
Sounds like a terrible contract for the company that wins the tender. I’m all for getting value but a company that wins a tender should expect to carry out the work without fear of the tender process continuing run looking for a cheaper price. Respect needed on both sides.
@Alan: I think it might mean that the contractor also can’t prevent tidy towns, or resident groups etc from touching ‘their weeds’.
Maybe they could collect the leaves and then maybe clear the gutters and drains and finally the weeds.
So DCC will cancel contract if job not done good or someone else comes with cheaper price, no matter how long into contract!!!
Sounds like a race to the bottom , why don’t they do the same with council staff wages?
@Brian Smith: they should do the same with most of their contracts,paying company’s that do f##k all,give it to the community employment schemes,with a decent living wage.
Project for unemployed? Salary for an overall agent, wages for team leaders, a bit of a bonus on top of unemployment benefit for those who volunteer … a lot less expense in total, but, sorry, no brown envelopes exchanged with that idea
@WoodlandBard: technically as it would be a labour intensive job it will increase employment.
@WoodlandBard: People like Dewayne Johnson, a former school groundskeeper?
@John Murphy: indeed, John, my point, perhaps an inceptive for unemployed to work out some ideas for a job or a small business that costs little to start up.
Seemingly untidy and overgrown areas can be a haven for the wildlife of our city. These areas can be tidied up with a little bit of hard work. Last year I was horrified to see two guys on ride-on weed sprayer machines pulling up to spray most likely carcinogenic weed-killer in every direction while they remained seated. Some days later the area was entirely wilted. It is the lazy mans approach and it is killing our city and verges.
@Sean:
but they look tidy!!
The only weed control I’d be interested in is taking the control from criminal gangs and making it freely available for all who want to use it
‘damage is not done to trees and shrubs that are in the same areas as the weeds’ need to enforce that one,
Let’s hope that whoever gets the Contract that they train the Guys to recognize Weeds. I had to reseed my Grass verge a number of years ago after some Clown sprayed around the Tree that had Flowers
@Seosamh Mc Gabhann: That won’t happen. There is no definition of a weed except a plant growing where you don’t want it.
@Sean: I agree ☝️, but you would have to see the result , a mature tree surrounded by Howth Stone and planted with Flowers with a ring of dead grass, not a weed in sight !
Another angle of this is that what we call weeds includes a lot of useful plants. It may be that this need not be a chemical splashing clinical clean up but an opportunity of some nature preservation and education. I sometimes offer foraging nature walks myself. However this idea is tricky as a lot of these ‘weeds’ are constantly exposed to exhaust fumes, but some may be in quiet places? Hard to set up, though, as people want easy quick solutions that put fast money in their pockets … and the last thing they will think of is eco, and natural low cost health alternatives. Even so, wish there was more thought about this.
And they wonder why people get cancer – dogs sniffing on the verges too – bees wiped out – but hey it looks tidy. Dublin Council should be sued for using these sprays.
How about spending more money on combating illegal dumping in the north city centre?
Why not break the contract up into smaller sections and offer it to multiple small local companies to look after A designated area which would encourage competition and potentially get jobs for local people but this contract is only open to a small section of Big contract company’s the small companies do not have a hope even though they can offer much better value for money.
The smaller companies just don’t do brown envelopes and arse pockets
@Chris Turner:
What makes you think it would be cheaper to offer it to let’s say five small contractors rather than one big one?
Surely there would be economy’s of scale?
Brilliant! The public service offering a contract for €500,000 when they could have got it for €350,000!
@Dotty Dunleary: how so?
@Dotty Dunleary: Sound like a trumpism there
They should just legalise it man
They should just legalise is man
They should tax it and use the money to invest in infrastructure
It two cold for the muppet to come out and inspect the work
Just did a bit of research and this company had it before. Surly we should be giving contracts like this to Irish Company’s.
http://greentownenvironmental.com/
In other words a large contractor who already does work for the council , cause nobody could borrow against a risk like that
Wouldn’t it be cheaper if they just leagalized it?
What abou the whooommeless?
I don’t mind the weeds. Maybe they should see what the public wants their money spent on. I consider weeds wildflowers.
Ragwort is one of the most noxious weeds in Ireland and farmers are required by law to remove it from their land. One method recommended is during land inspection the farmer is advised to close his eyes and pull like a dog just like the rowing O’Donovan Brothers.
I thought the Garda were doing a great job of “Weed control “
Give me a decent wage and the tools and I’ll work the hours needed to do this job for a tenth of that price. I am hungry for work and I would take great pleasure doing the city a great service
Let the corpo dig the weeds out of the ground. It’s part of the road sweepers job.
Lots of those ‘weeds’ are edible and eating them would be a much more environmentally sound way of dealing with them!
About time too
Ah Jaysus half a million.. For weeds? Have they housed the homeless and fixed our hospitals yet? Another effing waste of money
That money would be better spent getting rid of rodents
Kevin How about getting out there and cutting the grass yourself. It is a community area that needs attention and you are part of the community.
Answer them better to spend it on housing
You wanna see the state of the green areas in my estate. Ploughed up by vans and cars. Not cut more than twice a year. I give up
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