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'Orange is quite dangerous': Met Éireann explains lack of Red warning for Storm Babet's rain

Parts of southern counties were battered by heavy rains and flooding yesterday.

A STATUS ORANGE rainfall warning was in place for Cork and Kerry early yesterday amid Storm Babet, followed by a Status Yellow warning across the country.

Wexford, Wicklow and Waterford were also subject to an Orange warning for several hours in the afternoon.

Parts of the affected counties were battered by heavy rainfall, such as Midleton in Co Cork, where members of the Defence Forces were deployed as buildings flooded and roads were cut off.

Some locals and representatives have questioned whether a Status Red weather warning should have been sounded. ”Met Éireann must urgently explain why no red level weather warning was issued,” Cork East TD James O’Connor wrote on social media

In Scotland, which was also hit by the storm, a Red warning was issued for the first time since Storm Denis in 2020.

Met Éireann’s Chief Hydrometeorologist Eoin Sherlock has explained how the national forecaster decides what type of warning to issue ahead of an extreme weather event.

Speaking on RTÉ Radio One’s Morning Ireland earlier today, Sherlock said that Met Éireann uses Irish and European weather models to inform its predictions.

In the case of Storm Babet, the model guidance was suggesting that it would be Orange warning conditions, he said.

There were a couple of weather stations where it “crept into Red territory”, he said, but most were within the threshold for Orange or even Yellow warnings.

“The way we do it is we look at, is it going to be a widespread event? Will it affect all of Co Cork?” Sherlock said.

Met Éireann describes Yellow warnings as “not unusual weather, localised danger”; Orange as “infrequent, dangerous/disruptive” and Red as “rare, extremely dangerous/destructive”. 

“From our perspective, Orange is the second highest warning alert,” Sherlock said.

“We issue storm names when we expect Orange level wind warnings and that’s partly to help the public understand what’s coming, so if we issue an Orange warning for wind or for rain, it really is [a situation where] ‘I better check out my surroundings, I better think hard about what’s going to come.

Sherlock said that the thresholds for weather warnings and how Met Éireann communicates about them will change as Ireland’s long-term climate also changes.

“Every 30 years we look at the climate and for every 10 years we look at the climate averages. What that means is we look at what’s happened over the last 30 years -0 so that’s 1991 to 2020 — and we do some analysis,” he explained.

A Red warning would probably correspond to the highest 1 or 2% of rainfall events. An Orange warning would be probably the 95th percentile.

“The climate has changed, there’s no doubt about that, that’s unequivocal. We’ve gotten warmer; we’ve seen temperatures increase by point seven degrees since the last round of climate averages in the last 10 years,” Sherlock said.

“We can expect more extreme rainfall because the temperature has increased. So, what we’re doing now is we’re looking at the thresholds that we have for the warnings and are going to change them in reflection of what’s happening in the climate,” he said.

“For example, the Yellow wind warnings, we’ll move up the lower threshold in particular by five kilometres per hour, so I think it’s 50 to up to 55 kilometres per hour. We’ll still warn people about that in our forecasts, but for the weather warnings, the threshold [will be different].

“Another thing that we’re trying to do is to look at not only what the weather will be but what the weather will do. If you’ve been looking at our warnings over the last couple of days, we have been warning about flooding and we’ve been warning about difficult driving conditions.

“Maybe people don’t understand what 80 kilometre per hour winds are, but if we if we can inform people that there’s going to be flooding, they can take the necessary steps.

“As a quick recap: Orange is quite dangerous. There’s only one or two millimetres between an Orange rainfall warning and a Red.”

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    Mute Tommy Haze
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    Oct 19th 2023, 4:11 PM

    The moral of the fable The Boy Who Cried Wolf is that “Nobody believes a liar…even when he is telling the truth!”
    These retractions are a direct result of Climate Change ideologues attempting to instill a sense of fear and panic amongst the masses.
    Mainstream Media now employ dedicated Climate Crisis journalists to trot out a relentless barrage of doom and gloom propaganda around weather and climate.
    At this point it can arguably be classified as a Doomsday Cult.
    Don’t get sucked into it.

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    Mute Brendan O'Brien
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    Oct 19th 2023, 4:17 PM

    @Tommy Haze: Utter nonsense: there are no ‘retractions’ in the article.. it’s time for people like you to wake up and accept that the energy you’ve invested in denialism was misspent.

    94
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    Mute Thesaltyurchin
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    Oct 19th 2023, 6:33 PM

    @Tommy Haze: So is that a lie, or the truth you’ve got there?

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    Mute
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    Oct 19th 2023, 8:39 PM

    @Thesaltyurchin:
    Just more post truth alternative facts from the Irish Light Brigade!

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    Mute
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    Oct 19th 2023, 8:44 PM

    @Tommy Haze:
    The real moral of The Boy Who cried Wolf Blitzer is to never tell the lie twice! ;~}

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    Mute Pat Farrelly
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    Oct 22nd 2023, 11:38 PM

    @Tommy Haze:

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    Mute Pat Farrelly
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    Oct 22nd 2023, 11:39 PM

    @Pat Farrelly: Don’t get sucked in like you were. That’s good advice, thank you.

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    Mute John Mcmahon
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    Oct 20th 2023, 1:30 AM

    An Orange warning means I have to leave my house and go to work a red means I can stay and look after my home .
    We will never see a red warning again
    It cost the state too much in lack of revenue

    26
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    Mute Pato
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    Oct 19th 2023, 4:12 PM

    There’s an orange one, and a. green one a blue one and a yellow one and no one knows the difference as they all look just the same.

    24
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    Mute William Tallon
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    Oct 19th 2023, 4:47 PM

    @Pato: “And the people in the houses
    All went to the university
    Where they were put in boxes
    And they came out all the same
    And there’s doctors and lawyers
    And business executives
    And they’re all made out of ticky-tacky
    And they all look just the same…”

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    Mute Thesaltyurchin
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    Oct 19th 2023, 5:34 PM

    @Pato: Jheez I hope you’re not a driver, traffic lights going to be chaos for you.

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    Mute Gearoid O'Ceilleachair
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    Oct 19th 2023, 3:37 PM

    Students should learn about the climate as they learn about biology and geology. However, the misuse of biology in the 19th century led to prejudice written as an evolutionary narrative (natural selection). 

    Humanity can model climate for interpretative purposes and conclusions rather than the junk of predictive conclusions that occupy scientific method modellers.

    Short-term weather modelling does not translate into long-term weather as climate and all, but the unfortunate should know this. Ireland has a fantastic maritime climate, so the sooner meteorologists return to informing society about what causes the storms to roll in off the Atlantic, the quicker these short-term weather modellers will be forgiven for dumping anxiety on humanity for no good reason.

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    Oct 19th 2023, 4:26 PM

    20 trucks?? It’s a joke

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    Mute Chris Thaunton
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    Oct 19th 2023, 10:35 PM

    @: half them are probably full of rocket parts, thousands of which have been launched in Israel in the last 10 days alone.

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    Mute john mac
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    Oct 19th 2023, 4:47 PM

    A lot of people are black and blue after getting no warning

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    Mute Colm de Cleir
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    Oct 20th 2023, 6:29 PM

    Why does it have to affect the entire county to be red? Cork is a big county, so if it’s going to be particularly bad in certain parts, surely that’s useful information…

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    Mute Pato
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    Oct 20th 2023, 7:01 AM

    @Johnmcmahon. Not to mention having to allow the civil servants to work from home. Anyone got the new box set from Amazon?

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    Mute Denis Rathsallagh Brady
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    Oct 22nd 2023, 5:06 AM

    If a flooding isn’t a red warning i dont know what is (i do, no need for smart ass comments)
    Flooding is a danger to life. We either need a new warning system and not just guess work. Which seems to what happened in Cork the past few days

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