Met Eireann have forecast mild temperatures for the week despite fears of an Arctic blast hitting the country.
This comes as the UK Met Office have warned a Sudden Stratospheric Warming (SSW) event is now “likely” with scientists predicting an 80% chance of another SSW towards the end of this month.
In March 2018, a similar weather event caused widespread heavy snow and freezing temperatures in Ireland, bringing the country to a standstill with cancelled transport services and schools closed.
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However, Ireland's national forecasters have forecast mild though unsettled weather for the coming week, with daytime temperatures up to 12C or 13C.
It is expected to be a breezy week as well, as Met Eireann wrote: "Quite unsettled until later in the week with wet and blustery conditions at times."
Monday is expected to start off generally dry but cloudy in the morning with sunny spells developing in the west that will extend eastwards through the afternoon. However, patchy rain will develop in the southwest during the evening.
Highest temperatures will reach 9C to 12C degrees with fresh southerly winds that will be strong along western Atlantic coasts.
Tuesday will be a cloudy and blustery day with a few scattered outbreaks of rain in the morning. It will become drier in the afternoon with the best of the afternoon sunny spells in the east and staying quite mild with highest temperatures of 11C to 14C in fresh and gusty southerly winds.
While Met Eireann has refused to rule out the possibility of issuing wintry weather warnings as fears grow over a ‘Beast from the East’ repeat, it could be as far as two weeks away.
Though weather models show that a Sudden Stratospheric Warming (SSW) event is now ‘likely’ to take place. This can lead to cold, dry weather coming into the north of Europe and across Ireland.
Forecasters have pinpointed the end of February into the start of March as the date Ireland would be impacted by the weather phenomenon - but have cautioned that its exact impacts are still uncertain this far out.
Paul Moore, a climatologist with Met Eireann, told RTE it usually takes two to three weeks for a sudden stratospheric warming event to have an effect.
He said: "Every sudden stratospheric warming is different and not all of them disrupt the tropospheric patterns below. For example, the event in January 2019 did not significantly disrupt the tropospheric patterns below and had no effect on the weather patterns over north-western Europe.
"The event in February 2018 caused major disruption to the tropospheric patterns below and led directly to the colder than average temperatures in Ireland during February and March 2018, including the very cold outbreak from the east culminating with storm Emma at the end of February and beginning of March 2018."
It comes as the UK’s Met Office published a new blog post and issued a weather alert.
They said: “The latest forecasts are showing that a major SSW is now likely to take place. The recent minor SSW weakened the SPV and it’s now likely to collapse and reverse in the middle of February.
“A major SSW often makes the jet stream meander more, which can lead to a large area of blocking high pressure over northern Europe, including the UK [and Ireland]. This blocking high pressure can lead to cold, dry weather in the north of Europe, including the UK [and Ireland], with mild, wet and windy conditions more likely for southern areas of the continent. However, this is not always the case and impacts on UK weather can also be benign when an SSW occurs.”
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