HOMES AND BUSINESSES DAMAGED BY FLOODS

Homeowners and business people are still counting the cost of the damage caused by Monday’s sustained rainfall which brought severe flooding to Monaghan town and other parts of the county.
 Henry Skeath, who operates an official rainfall station at Knockroe, Monaghan on behalf of the Met Office in Dublin told The Northern Standard that Monday was the wettest day since he began keeping records in September 1979.
 The monthly average rainfall for October is 103mms. On Saturday there was a rainfall of 17.3 mms, on Sunday 21.2mms while Monday saw a fall of 63.3 mms. The three days together came to 101.8 mms, the equivalent of a months rain in three days.
 The previous wettest day recorded by Mr Skeath was 61.4 mms which fell on 5th August 1996, but the week before that was fairly dry and the flooding was not as extensive.
 56.4 mms (2.2 inches) of rain fell in Monaghan on October 1929. This particular fall of rain continued for another three hours into the following day to give an accumulated total of 54 mms (2.96 inches) in the space of fifteen hours and was the worst rainstorm in the memory of the oldest inhabitants of the town.
 A number of business premises were flooded in Monday’s downpour and the Fire Brigade had to pump water from the Monaghan Bottlers premises in the town.