Risk of flooding as rainfall warning in effect for nine counties

Up to 40 millimetres of rain will fall in parts of Ireland over the next 24 hours.

Weather forecasters are warning of more flooding in parts of Ireland over the coming hours.

There is a Status Yellow rainfall warning in place until early tomorrow morning for all of Connacht as well as Longford, Donegal, Clare and Kerry.

The warning came into effect at 4am this morning and will remain in place until 4am on Thursday morning.

It follows two storms over the past ten days, which also brought torrential rain, and lots of land is still saturated.

"We do expect to see some heavy rainfall across parts of the west and north-west of the country in particular," said Cathal Nolan from Ireland's Weather Channel.

Wet and rather windy today with widespread rain, heavy at times across Atlantic counties with a risk of flooding. Occasional drier spells too, with the best of these across the east and southeast. Less cold than recent days, with highs of 9 or 10°C, in fresh to strong SW winds. pic.twitter.com/vahJfGliqs

— Met Éireann (@MetEireann) February 19, 2020

"Obviously that will have some significant impacts in terms of flooding.

"There are quite a number of river systems in the region at present that are already approaching capacity or already in a state of flooding.

"Certainly this additional rainfall will lead to an increase in the occurrence of flooding in that particular part of the country in the course of the next 48 hours."

Mr Nolan warned that some homes could be flooded over the coming days.

"We haven't reached the levels that we would have experienced through parts of 2014 or in 2008 or 2009 but at the same time the water level is beginning to creep up in many parts of the country.

"With more rainfall forecast as we head into the weekend there is the risk then of some properties, particularly in those areas that prone to flooding on a bi-annual basis."