Another storm set to arrive - what to know about Storm Boelo

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Ciara Kelly (0:40)

The Hard Shoulder, with Ciara Kelly and Shane Colman. On Newstalk, with Kia.

Now, as one storm passes, another is set to arrive. Met Éireann has issued status orange weather warnings, which are due to come into effect tomorrow, as Storm Bolo arrives. And joining us now to explain what this means for you, this bank holiday weekend is Mark Bowe, Met Éireann forecaster and Keith Leonard, head of the National Directorate of Fire and Emergency Management. Mark, I might come to you first of all, and I hope I'm pronouncing Bolo correctly, but this latest storm, where is it going to land and how bad is it going to be?

Mark Bowe (1:18)

Yeah, so it's going to be quite significant, this storm, and we've had Austin which passed by, but this will be a lot more impactful. This area of low pressure is going to deepen quite significantly over the next couple of hours. It's going to pass to our north, so it's going to bring plenty of wind and plenty of rain right across our western county, so all the way from kind of west Munster up to Connacht and up towards Ulster as well. And it'll bring some heavy rain, that'll be earlier in the morning and afternoon tomorrow.

So we have orange warnings out for Kerry, but it's further to the north, closer to the low centre, we're going to see the very strong winds, particularly across coastal counties in Connacht and up towards into Donegal as well. They're going to see some extremely strong winds during the morning and afternoon. So this storm will be quite something, it'll lead to quite a lot of impacts, especially during the morning and afternoon, right across parts of the north-west. We've got the rain moving in early, the rain will push away, so you'll know it's happening because it's going to start lashing rain and the rain will be quite heavy, especially as you go towards around midday, then the very strong winds come in and they're going to continue during the afternoon and evening, especially right in the far north across Donegal. They're going to be extremely strong winds now to bear this in mind.

Ciara Kelly (2:24)

Okay, so are we looking at, in that case, Mark, are we looking at floods? Are we looking at very high seas? Are we looking at all of what would go with that? This is a significant storm all along the western seaboard.

Mark Bowe (2:36)

Exactly right, yeah.

So you are going to see some localized flooding, but the very strong winds combined with the high seas, you're going to see some coastal wave overtopping, you're going to see damage to the structures, fallen trees. You're going to see quite a lot going on, especially in the northwest, but the rain does arrive first. So that's not only it kind of comes in two parts, it comes in two parts, it comes in two parts. So you're going to see the storm. We'll see the rain and heavy rain first. Then it's the strong winds.

Ciara Kelly (2:58)

OK, thank you very much for joining us on all of that. That is Mark Bowe there, Met Éireann forecaster, and we bring in Keith Leonard here, Head of the National Directorate of Fire and Emergency Management.

Keith, you heard what Mark had to say, flooding, high seas, fallen trees. What, I suppose, precautions are you asking people to take? And what services are going to be available to people who are affected?

Keith Leonard (3:20)

So, Ciara, yeah, absolutely, Mark described kind of very difficult conditions, particularly along that Atlantic Western Seaboard tomorrow. And really the advice to people tomorrow, particularly in Kent and all those areas affected in Galway, Donegal, Sligo, Mayo, is to be very careful when traveling outdoors tomorrow, particularly that it's a long-duration event tomorrow up in the north-west of the country, kind of the warnings coming in at 2pm and really not expiring until the following morning. So, you know, quite a difficult and long-duration event, likely to see a lot of electricity outages. So the first piece of advice we always gave is for people to charge their phones in advance of this event so that if they need to contact the emergency services, they're able to make contact quickly.