Nolan's Ireland Blog

Ireland's Extreme Weather: Rain and Flooding  For Ireland, I will focus on the country's most common form of extreme weather: heavy rainfall and flooding.  Ireland's amazing, green landscapes come with a trade-off: heavy rain and frequent flooding. The North Atlantic Ocean influences Ireland's weather, providing frequent rain throughout the year, mostly on the west coast and in river valleys. With climate change increasing the intensity and frequency of storms and events of prolonged rain, flooding, like in the image below, won't be gone anytime soon . Large-scale flooding of major rivers, like the River Shannon, occurs regularly depending on heavy rainfall events. Cities like Dublin, Cork, and Limerick are frequently experiencing flooded areas in residential sections because of inadequate storm drainage systems. Flooding in coastal areas, notably along western and southern coasts, can occur when storm surges occur at high tide. The effects of this flooding are wide...

Mass wasting, in the form of landslides, mudslides, and rockslides, is becoming an increasing problem in Ireland. Landslides occur because of gravity pulling earth and rock downhill, but often, Ireland's heavy rain increases these events. Mixing the wet climate with Ireland's hilly terrain creates a high risk for certain areas. A recent landslide is the peat landslide in County Donegal in 2020. Weeks of rain had soaked the soil, and with one swoop, a landslide hit hard at the local nature reserve. Further back, in 2003, another huge landslide took place due to the building of a wind farm, this time in Derrybrien, County Galway. The latter was the result of a combination of deforestation and heavy rainfall. It caused not only environmental destruction but also some legal repercussions for Ireland with regard to the way it was managed. Most of them feature the same cause, too much rainfall. That is when the earth's saturation causes its walls and floors to begin losing stabil...