THERE IS A good chance that snow will return to Ireland this week. It should be limited to hilly areas, to some parts of Donegal and to Northern Ireland, but overall temperatures everywhere will drop.

We will all experience the wind chill factor from the north to north-westerly winds pushing in from Friday.

Met Eireann is warning that there will be slight frost in sheltered areas tomorrow night and the weather will be pretty changeable up until Friday. It is then that the national weather forecaster expects “some hard frosts”. The frost should be particularly sharp on Friday night with “present indications suggesting that it ceome much colder for next weekend”.

There is a risk of “wintry” showers too with The Star newspaper today quoting Met Eireann’s Eoin Sherlock as saying:

It’s going to be quite cold on Friday and it looks like there could be some snow in Donegal and the six counties.

Met Eireann reported in its Winter 2010/11 summary (for December, January and February) that December was one of the coldest months on record in Ireland and that cold spells had also dominated January. However, it noted that “it was the warmest February for between nine and 13 years almost everywhere, with mean air temparatures for the month around two degrees higher than normal”.