IRELAND IS SET to experience rather mild conditions next week, so it appears that anyone dreaming of a white Christmas will have to wait another year. 

Speaking to TheJournal.ie at Met Éireann’s Glasnevin HQ this afternoon for an upcoming episode of our podcast The Explainer, head of forecasting Evelyn Cusack provided a glimpse into weather conditions over the Christmas period. 

Met Éireann’s medium range forecast can predict 10 days ahead. So, as of today, it can predict the forecast up until St Stephen’s Day, 26 December. 

During this period, Ireland will remain in an Atlantic air flow, in between cold polar fronts from the north and warm tropical fronts from the south, according to Cusack. 

“Some days it’s going to get colder, some days going to get milder, and we’re going to get a lot of rain in between and wet and windy weather,” Cusack said. 

But the predictions now for Christmas Day and for Stephen’s Day is for very mild weather.

Over these days, it looks as though Ireland will remain on the warm side of the polar front, which will remain to the north of the country. 

“Now, that polar front could slip maybe 50 miles south and then we’d be on the cold side, but even then it doesn’t look like … we’re not going to be in the Arctic air like in Christmas 2009, 2010,” Cusack said. 

Summarising next week’s forecast, Cusack added that “it looks fairly mild”. 

Looking at 2019 as a whole, she said: “On average, looking at the whole year, it’s been slightly milder than average.”

With reporting by Nicky Ryan