EYE-WITNESS FLOODING

We had to go to Sligo yesterday (Sunday) to visit a branch of our church there. We were a little apprehensive because we knew we would be going through some of the flooded places. Not even very far out of our town we started seeing big puddles (like small ponds) in the fields. The further west we went the bigger they got. The worst flooding we saw was in Carrick-on-Shannon. (Just FYI - "Carrick-on-Shannon" means "Bridge on the Shannon River", which flows around and through the town.) As we came into the main part of town, they had only one way traffic into town. Even then, the road was flooded. They had a Garda (police officer) there directing traffic (and probably watching the flood to see if it rose any higher). We drove through water almost up to our floorboards. The other side of the road was flooded worse, so they had diverted the traffic through the downtown area for them to go east out of town. All through that town we saw flooding - stores and gas stations sand-bagged with flooded parking lots. Some stores only had one row of sand-bags, but we saw a grocery store where the water looked deeper and they had literally a small wall of sandbags around it. Even when we left town, we still saw water on both sides of the road. Granted there is a river there that goes on both sides, but it was quite over its banks in many, many places. We didn't see any flooding it any of the other towns, including Sligo, just mainly out of town.