The risk of flooding will continue until early next week, Alan O’Reilly of Carlow Weather has warned. 

While the orange weather warnings for counties Louth, Dublin, Wicklow and Waterford later today, Met Éireann has forecast further rain across Munster and Connacht. 

There will also be persistent showers in some parts of the country on Saturday. 

 “There's a little bit of a break at the moment in some parts,” Mr O’Reilly told Newstalk Breakfast. 

“And there wasn't as much rain overnight as maybe some of the weather models had shown, but still more rain to come. 

“That rain will primarily, the heaviest of it will be in the east and especially the northeast.”

A walker stops to take pictures of high waves and sea spray at Clontarf. Picture by: Sasko Lazarov/RollingNews.ie.

Mr O’Reilly continued that the weekend will bring “some respite” but that flooding, especially in coastal areas, is likely to occur once again. 

“We are seeing the impacts of that rainfall now,” he explained. 

“Over 53 millimetres of rain in 24 hours at a weather station in Roundwood in County Wicklow and the River Slaney rain gorge in Tullow is rising very fast now.

“Especially in the northeast, it will stay very windy through this morning. 

“So again, at high tide, you will likely have some issues again with coastal flooding.”

“You will still see a lot of local flooding in terms of streams and rivers that are rising through Saturday, especially.”

High waves and sea spray at Clontarf. Picture by: Sasko Lazarov/RollingNews.ie.

Sunday will bring some sunshine to certain counties, but not enough to completely mitigate the risk of flooding from already high river levels. 

“Truly, there's very little drying weather at the moment,” Mr O’Reilly warned. 

“We can see that river levels do need a number of days before they really start to drop and even at that, they're dropping slowly.

“We will see a bit of a respite up until Monday, but there is a risk of more rain on Tuesday. 

“So, I don't think we're going to be moving away from the risk of flooding for at least the next couple of days, at least, unfortunately.”

Main image: High waves and sea spray at Clontarf. Picture by: Sasko Lazarov/RollingNews.ie.