January 09, 2005
Still raining
Shannon Callows in flood.
It's still raining. On Friday night, a flash of lightning and an almighty clap of thunder woke me up in the middle of the night. And then there's the rain. Like many other houses built in the last decade, mine has vents in each room. And like most houses, those vents are constructed by simply drilling a big hole in the wall and covering it with a couple of thin plastic grills. And on windy nights, those vents shriek like banshees. And boy, have they shrieked all last week.
Thankfully, no tiles flew off the roof, no trees came crashing through the wall and no water came flowing through the door. It's one of the benefits of living on high ground. Others are not so lucky. Every inch of 'storm' rain that falls is equivalent to 22.7 thousand gallons of water per acre (that's about one and a half million gallons per square mile) . In Galway city, that's a lot of run-off water. In the rest of the county, the rain has been so continuous that it has overwhelmed the land's natural ability to absorb it, and the volume is so much that rivers can't drain it. The wind is equally destructive, taking down powerlines in Connemara and sending the ice-rink marquee in the city flying into the river. at the time of writing, the Dunkellin river at Craughwell has overwhelmed the road bridge, disrupting traffic between Dublin and Galway. Flooding in Gort is also increasing (though no surprise there).
Posted by Monasette at January 9, 2005 10:03 PM