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Amy Donohoe

RTE Met Eireann Joanna Donnelly forced to explain herself to Twitter trolls after holding wine during forecast

Met Eireann and RTE forecaster Joanna Donnelly has been forced to explain herself to Twitter trolls after she posted a forecast video with a glass of wine in her hand.

The weather expert posted a Twitter clip of herself talking about the upcoming heatwave on Friday with a small glass of wine in her hand.

Donnelly explained why it would be so warm but some people were fixated on her glass. The forecaster felt the need to defend herself on social media the next day.

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She tweeted: "I’m not a big drinker at all - any of my friends on here that know me - actually know me - will attest to that. Last night I hadn’t had a sip of wine before I made a video. The content of the glass (half a glass) was all I had all night. #gimmeabreak."

Meanwhile, Ms Donnelly is spreading the good news this week as Ireland is in for heatwave-like conditions. She told Morning Ireland: “It’s a beautiful summer week, let's get out and enjoy the sunshine.”

“It’s summertime and I think we’re all entitled to enjoy a bit of summer weather. We don’t want to oversaturate the public with doom and gloom and you can’t enjoy anything because everything is going to be awful so you’ll lose your message if you keep up that kind of behaviour. But it’s a global climate crisis.”

Joanna said that it should be quite pleasant these next few days but it might get a little uncomfortable from Thursday.

“It’s going to be blue skies hot, blue skies warm and sunny,” she added. “After Thursday when this warmer air comes up from the south, then it might be a little bit uncomfortable.

“The overnight temperatures will be 13 to 14 degrees Celsius which is a little high for us in Ireland but still all very pleasant. No complaining or it will go away. Pretend you’re in the Algarve.”

But with hot weather comes extra problems from price increases to water dangers, Joanna explained it’s not all sunny skies.

She said: “It’s going to be dry. We’d a lovely spell of rain the weekend before last and that gave us a bit of saturation with the grass. We’re going to pay for that in a few weeks when we pay for a packet of potatoes and we realise the price has to go up because we’ve to pay for the water to water the potatoes.

“When it gets warm and hot more people take to the sea. You need to put a vest on and if you’re responsible for other people in the water you need to put a vest on too. At Met Eireann, we’re responsible for search and rescue.

“If the coast guard has to go out, we have to give them a forecast before they can take off. There’s an increased number of rescues needed when the weather gets good. Make sure your children are not taking those inflatables out into the sea, they’ll go out into the sea before you can even blink.”

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