Met Éireann does have discretion to issue warnings based on impact, Joanna Donnelly says

Ireland’s Meteorological Service has come in for some criticism this week in the wake of Storm Chandra.

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Locals in parts of Dublin experienced severe flooding this week, but had little time to prepare as, although a wind warning was issued, a rain warning wasn’t.

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A Met Éireann forecaster told The Journal that the forecasting didn’t go far enough this week because it was a decision to enact warnings based solely on the level of rainfall and did not account for how wet the ground already was before a storm arrived.

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Joanna Donnelly, a meteorologist and weathercaster who worked for Met Éireann for three decades before leaving last year, told The Journal that this week’s events show the need for a pivot in how warnings are decided. 

“A forecaster has discretion to issue a higher threshold warning even though the wind speeds might not necessarily be expected, based on the impact the wind may have. This is referred to as impact based forecasting,” she explained.

Even though Met Éireann still operates a threshold based warning system, she said, there is an understanding that impacts are to be accounted for.

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While Met Éireann states in relation to its warnings that there are “impact considerations”, it appears that the warnings issued for Tuesday either did not take them into account or did not believe they were sufficient to increase warning levels.

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Donnelly said it’s time to implement a full impact-based forecasting system and only use thresholds as guidelines.

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