Much has been made of “The Beast from the East”, the arctic blast that’s due to sweep the country over the next week. But how bad will it be? Joan Blackburn from Met Éireann joined Sean O’Rourke in studio this morning to give listeners an idea of what to expect.
According to Joan, not only is the weather originating in the east (the Siberia region), it will also affect the east of the country the most.
“The weather is coming from the east and that’s really when we tend to get the highest snowfall, particularly in the east of the country. And it is really a setup that it’s bringing in the very, very cold Siberian air over Ireland. And then we’ll have showers developing in the Irish Sea and those moving in to affect Eastern areas over the next few days.”
Joan explained that it’s expected that an Orange Warning will be issued for eastern coastal counties from Tuesday evening through to Wednesday and that a second system moving up from the south will cause snow showers.
“It really all depends on this next system coming up from the south, how it behaves…The worst of it will be…Thursday evening, Thursday night and the first half of Friday.“
Sean asked if there was a possibility we could see the situation escalating to a Status Red weather warning. Joan thinks the combination of snowfall and high winds could make this a possibility.
“Potentially…at this moment in time, there are quite high indicators that could be the case…we really could be talking about blizzard-like conditions.”
Listen back to the whole segment on Today with Sean O’Rourke here.
For the most up-to-date weather information and to check if any warnings are in place in your area, see Met Éireann’s website, met.ie or RTÉ Weather here.