Yellow warning as snow predicted for Westmeath on Thursday

A yellow warning for snow and ice is in place for the entire country for Thursday.

Met Éireann says sleet and snow will spread northwards across the country later tonight (Wednesday night) and during Thursday, accompanied by strengthening easterly winds, bringing accumulations of snow along with icy conditions.

The state met service says it will cause hazardous driving conditions, disruption to travel and poor visibility.

Climate Change consultant, Cathal Nolan of Ireland's Weather Channel, says as we go through tonight and tomorrow, a weather front coming up from the south will interact with the colder air already in place over Ireland, bringing some heavy falls of snow in places across Westmeath.

“There’s still some uncertainty as to just how heavy the snow will be, but by the time most of us wake up tomorrow morning it should probably be snowing at that stage.

“It’s expected to continue throughout most of Thursday, but it depends upon a couple of factors - on how low the temperatures get tonight, it certainly looks like there will be falls of snow in the morning time and again throughout the course of the day if those temperatures stay close enough to freezing," Cathal continued.

“In terms of quantity it’s still a little bit uncertain but you could see certainly between 10cm in some of the heavier locations maybe up as high as 15cm, depending on the intensity of that snow and just how long it lasts for. Certainly in the more hilly areas you could see up to 10-15cm.

“Temperature-wise it will hover pretty close to freezing throughout. Tonight temperatures will fall to around -2 to -3 degrees, daytime values tomorrow will stay around 1-2 degrees Celsius but staying closer to zero where the snow is.

“The cold air looks like it’s going to last into the weekend. Thursday and Friday will remain very cold, with temperatures staying close to freezing."

Cathal says the disruption to our typical spring weather has been caused by the sudden stratospheric warming event which occurred in the upper atmosphere three weeks ago.

"It changed the course of the airmass. It takes about two weeks for that to filter through the various layers, before you start to see it impact on the ground.

“That’s essentially what’s happening here, we’ve lost those typical westerly winds that we’ve enjoyed for much of the winter really, and they’ve switched around to a more northerly and easterly direction.

"That brought in the colder air that is still in place across the continent and up over arctic regions, and now as we see that milder Atlantic air trying to come back in, that’s where you see the clash and the resultant snow."

Beyond the weekend, Cathal states that our weather will to revert back to typical March weather, with a more unsettled Atlantic regime on the cards.

“We'll see a return to low pressures, with southwesterly winds, rain and temperatures rising again."