Waterford has seen almost half a month's worth of rain in a 34-hour period over today and yesterday (Wednesday and Thursday).
Michael Kelly from Waterford Weather runs a weather station in Ballybeg.
Michael has been monitoring daily weather since 2010 - and says recent levels of rainfall have only been seen three times in the past eleven years.
Michael says 50mm of rain fell yesterday, the most since August 17th last year.
He says the past 34hrs is the most rain he's ever recorded at his weather station.
"Yesterday, we had 50mm of rain. It's not a station record for me - there was 54.1mm in 2020 on the 17th of August - but we've only got 50mm three times in the last eleven years. Overnight, there's been more rain again - another 18 millimetres. If you add that on, for the 34 hour period - it's the most rain I've ever recorded and my data goes back to October 2010."
For what is typical of October, Waterford has seen an astronomical amount of that rain in the past day and a half.
"The 34 hour total has been 68 millimetres. I've never recorded that amount of rain before. Just to put it into context, for the month of October - the average rain would be roughly 120 millimetres. In the last 34 hours, we got roughly half a month's worth of rain. If you think back a couple of days ago, we got 20 millimetres. This day last week, we got the same. In the last 7 days, we've had nearly 100 millimetres of rain - which is a month's worth, so we've certainly had our fill of it."
Michael noted that it is the opinion of climatologists that extreme weather events like these will become more frequent in future.
"I've only recorded fifty millimetres or more four times in eleven years. Seeing record rainfalls might be more of a trend going forward, these types of events might be more common."
