{"id":33380,"date":"2025-07-21T13:40:39","date_gmt":"2025-07-21T13:40:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/m12-craigavon-closed-and-floods-in-enniskillen-as-heavy-rain-hits\/"},"modified":"2025-07-21T13:40:39","modified_gmt":"2025-07-21T13:40:39","slug":"m12-craigavon-closed-and-floods-in-enniskillen-as-heavy-rain-hits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/m12-craigavon-closed-and-floods-in-enniskillen-as-heavy-rain-hits\/","title":{"rendered":"M12 Craigavon closed and floods in Enniskillen as heavy rain hits"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Barra Best & Ross McKee<\/span><\/p>\n

BBC News NI<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Parts of Enniskillen flooded after heavy rain<\/figcaption><\/p>\n
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There has been major traffic disruption in parts of Northern Ireland on Monday as heavy rain continues to fall.<\/p>\n

Some weather stations recorded their wettest July day on record on Sunday following an amber weather warning for heavy rain overnight. <\/p>\n

This led to flash flooding in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh.<\/p>\n

The M12 carriageway in Craigavon, County Armagh, has been closed due to flooding and there were long delays in the M1 direction on Monday morning.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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On Sunday evening, some roads around Enniskillen were impassable and police urged motorists not to drive through flood water. <\/p>\n

The Met Office’s amber rain warning – the second highest level of alert – ended at 08:00 BST but a yellow warning for counties Antrim, Down and Armagh continued until about 14:00 on Monday.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"AlistairAlistair Hay<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Alistair Hay and Kim Mahon Hay were on a day trip to the Marble Arch Caves in County Fermanagh on Sunday<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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Kim Mahon Hay and her husband Alistair Hay were on a day trip to the Marble Arch Caves in County Fermanagh when they were caught in a flash flood.<\/p>\n

“We had seen that it was going to be showery but we thought we’d dart in and out between things and we thought the caves would be perfect because if it does rain you’re in the caves out of the rain,” Ms Mahon Hay told BBC Radio Ulster’s Nolan Show.<\/a><\/p>\n

“We definitely weren’t expecting the rain to come down as heavy as it did.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"AlistairAlistair Hay<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Kim Mahon Hay said they were not expecting such heavy rain<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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She said they began their tour at 16:15 BST and got half way through when their tour guide’s radio started to receive messages about the “torrential rain up above”.<\/p>\n

“Within minutes they started messaging to say the entrance in had become impassable and they were starting to send staff into the caves because the stairways then had become waterfalls,” Ms Mahon Hay said.<\/p>\n

She added that the staff at the Marble Arch Caves were “absolutely amazing in dealing with the situation”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"SimonSimon Burns<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Part of the main Enniskillen to Dublin Road was flooded on Sunday<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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County Fermanagh woman Helen Dolan Murphy was travelling through Enniskillen on Sunday evening and told BBC News the flooding “was like something out of a film”.<\/p>\n

“It was just really, really scary,” she said. <\/p>\n

“I’m around a long time and I’ve never witnessed [flooding] to be this vast and happen so quick.” <\/p>\n

She said her husband was driving them from their home in Belcoo to Enniskillen when “the heavens opened” about four miles from the town.<\/p>\n

She said the force of the flood raised manholes off the ground and she saw staff from a butcher’s shop in Belmore Street mopping floodwater out of their store.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"SimonSimon Burns<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

A drainage company worked to clear the flood water from the Dublin Road in Enniskillen<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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Ms Dolan Murphy said they had to navigate back roads to return home.<\/p>\n

“Fields looked like they were lakes, it was something I had never seen, how quick and how fast it happened,” she added.<\/p>\n

“We live in a border town, so there were a lot of southern cars who might not know the back roads, quite well.<\/p>\n

“We were quite relieved by the time we got home.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Michelle<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Michelle Hannigan said Ninth Avenue on the Sligo Road had to close<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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Michelle Hannigan, from Ninth Avenue restaurant in Enniskillen, said it had to close after water got into the premises and affected one of the fridges.<\/p>\n

“We came back this morning to clear up and check everything and were able to reopen,” she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Road closures<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
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The M12 carriageway at Craigavon has been closed following heavy rainfall<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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Close to a month’s worth of rain has been recorded in parts of County Down in less than 12 hours.<\/p>\n

Killowen, in the south of the county, saw 69mm of rain between 22:00 BST on Sunday and 10:00 BST on Monday.<\/p>\n

The average amount of rain the weather station normally sees for the whole month of July is 80.7mm.<\/p>\n

Killowen has also had its wettest July day on record and its third wettest day of any month, with records going back to 1997.<\/p>\n

Murlough, County Down, also had its wettest July day on record with 61.2mm of rain.<\/p>\n

Records there go back to 1968.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"A<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

There was a clean-up operation at Sligo Road in Enniskillen on Monday morning<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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Marble Arch Road, Florencecourt and Sligo Road, in Enniskillen, were badly affected by rainfall but police now say they are “passable”. <\/p>\n

The Met Office said there will probably be difficult driving conditions as well as fast flowing or deep flood water likely to cause danger to life.<\/p>\n

It has warned that homes and businesses may face flooding while some communities could be cut off by flooded roads.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"A<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Water had gathered in the underpass at Blacks Road in Belfast on Monday morning<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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The Met Office added that power cuts and loss of other services to homes and businesses are likely.<\/p>\n

A PSNI spokeswoman said “multi-agency partners” met throughout Sunday in response to the weather warning.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Orange alert for Republic of Ireland<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
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A similar weather warning was issued in the Republic of Ireland for counties Dublin, Louth and Meath.<\/p>\n

The Met \u00c9ireann (Irish meteorological service) status orange alert warned of persistent and heavy rain with a chance of thunderstorms.<\/p>\n

The organisation said it expected difficult travelling conditions, surface flooding and possible lightning damage.<\/p>\n

It recorded 60mm of rain in Dundalk, County Louth, which is well above the July average for eastern counties.<\/p>\n

The alert lasted until 14:00 local time on Monday.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n


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Barra Best & Ross McKee BBC News NI Parts of Enniskillen flooded after heavy rain There has been major traffic disruption in parts of Northern Ireland on Monday as heavy rain continues to fall. Some weather stations recorded their wettest July day on record on Sunday following an amber weather warning for heavy rain overnight. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33381,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[639,6212,11062,1802,1696,667,11061,1697],"class_list":["post-33380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-n-ireland","tag-closed","tag-craigavon","tag-enniskillen","tag-floods","tag-heavy","tag-hits","tag-m12","tag-rain"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33380"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33380\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33382,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33380\/revisions\/33382"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}