A weather expert has said the weather event that caused the Beast from the East in Ireland five years ago is "really kicking off" on weather maps.
Alan O'Reilly from Carlow Weather posted an update to his followers on Saturday night and pointed to the sudden stratospheric warming (SSW) that caused crippling snow to fall in Ireland in March 2018 currently forming once again.
Alan said a second round of warming is also possible but did say it's still too early to predict the impact the event will have on our weather.
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In 2018, a similar event caused widespread heavy snow in Ireland, bringing the country to a standstill with cancelled transport services and schools closed.
He posted: "Sudden stratospheric warming really kicking off, winds forecast to reverse by Tuesday. A second round of warming also forecast on GFS. Once again though any impact on our weather is uncertain, will be around 2 weeks away. It doesn’t mean beast from East, it increases risk of cold."
While the effects of this current warming are still too weeks ago, Alan says the models he's currently looking at bring with them an increased risk of a cold blast in our weather.
Met Eireann has refused to rule out the possibility of issuing wintry weather warnings as fears grow over a ‘Beast from the East’ repeat.
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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