WE’D ALREADY ENDURED the ferocious winds of Storm Desmond at this stage last year. Compared to 12 months ago, this winter’s been relatively calm and unremarkable.
That could all change by the end of the week though.
Met Éireann’s just issued a status yellow weather advisory for late this week. It looks like stormy weather is set to hit on Friday – with the north and west most at risk.
The weather service’s deputy head of forecasting Evelyn Cusack, who dropped by TheJournal.ie HQ for an interview, said it was far from certain how severe the conditions would be as yet, but that they wanted to issue the advice as people would be making travel plans for the days leading up to Christmas.
It looks like the storm centre may track close to the north-west of Ireland, so the north-west is most at risk. We will be issuing updates, obviously, every day.
White Christmas?
Asked whether parts of the country might experience a white Christmas, the forecaster said it was impossible to say yet whether snow might fall on the 25th.
Adding a bit of context about how conflicting air masses affect our weather day-to-day, Cusack added:
“Depending on the Friday storm, if it happens or not, it could change the course of things. At our latitudes our weather is dominated by where the jetstream is – so the jetstream is sort-of the dividing line or zone between warm air coming up from the tropics and cold air coming down from the Arctic, so where the two air masses meet we get the rain.
So our weather has been exceptionally mild because the jetstream has been north of Ireland so we’re on the mild side of the jetstream. The next few days we’re on the cold side of it. Whether we stay on the cold side for Christmas, we don’t know yet.
In case you were wondering, the forecast for tonight is for very cold conditions – as low as minus four in some areas with a sharp to severe frost. There’ll be some rain around tomorrow – with heavy bursts forecast for the afternoon.
We’ll have more from our interview with Evelyn Cusack later in the week.
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