Cold February

February has turned out to be quite cold so far and some stations are only averaging just over 0c due to severe night time frosts. Of course Ireland has escaped the severe weather of Europe that has left many people dead with blizzards and wintry conditions there bringing temperatures of minus 36 and lower in some rural spots.


Will we continue to escape. What looks like happening is that the cold weather in Europe is going to come up against the mild Atlantic weather just to the West of Ireland. Despite this most of the precipitation that falls looks like being rain as it will fall along the Western half of Ireland where the milder temperatures will be. Here it will be 6 or 7c though it will drop to 4 or 5c at times.


Further East it is drier and colder and if any of the rain makes inroads across the country it could turn to snow and this will cause all sorts of problems with transport and heating. It looks like a lot of dry cold weather will extend to Ireland around the 8th February so conditions should not be too bad.


Further on into the month there are the possibilities of one or two more snowy episodes mid month from the North and East and certainly Britain is going to be affected by these. In fact in the UK they could see a lot of snow accumulations in the next two to three weeks with temperatures below average there for most of the time.


Here in Ireland the temperatures will vary to just slightly below average in the West to below average in the East. There will be sharp to severe ground frosts too and night time temperatures will be between 0 and minus 5c at times. If there is any snow cover these temperatures could drop lower.