Wed, Thu, Fri - Potential Snow event

At last..

Get ready for "Will it snow in my garden"

The snow bunnies will come...

Haven't seen any forecast mention this.. has the chances of this developed only very recently?

We need the Wolf to believe too!

Regarding snow risk areas, it looks like a high ground affair largely based on the mean of all current output. The highest peaks in the south may see snow and higher ground in the northern half of Ireland, perhaps down to lower levels in northern counties. Worth keeping an eye on as it could upgrade. The tracks of Atlantic lows are rarely nailed on 3-4 days out.

18z ECMWF shows only 3-4 of the 53 members with our south coast above the boundary line. Our northern coastline is above the boundary in the vast majority.

I have a flight going out on Friday...will I make it 😀😀😀

Here we go! There might be snow on the most norderly tip of the country and you'll still get the Corkonians saying 'that's the cork snow shield!' 😂 You shoulda been in Carlow town and environs during the BFTE and you'd know what a snow shield was 😢

I was just going on uppers tbh, didn't look at precipitation - in fact I don't think you get charts like that on meteociel which is what I use

Yes , the Met Eireann forecast isn't great, rain and sleet with snow on high ground. It could be a decent event for the usual places higher up.

We usually miss out in these situations. I remember over 10 year years ago we had nearly 36 hours of rain and sleet. At first I thought it will turn to snow at some point, but no it didn't. John Eagleton at the time said a one degree temperature drop could have been the difference between a disruptive snow event instead of what we had.

I have never ever heard Met E forecast snow until it’s actually falling, wintry showers is all you’ll get out of them a few days in advance. Not having a go at them as snow is almost impossible to forecast here away from mountains.

I remember two days of rain and sleet at the end of Dec 2009, it was a big disappointment, so near and yet so far but it was the beginning of a decent cold cold spell.

Maybe next week?

Thursday/Friday's setup is looking very similar to March 9th/10th last year, where high ground areas of the west and north saw a dumping of snow. I ended up with a dumping of snow over 2 days. The precipitation rate and 850s spread for this event are almost identical. The only difference is that heights to the north were greater and the low went E across Ireland and Britain as opposed to the ENE trajectory of this week's system.

West Mayo had heavy snow for hours from that , while further east we had hours of cold rain. It was unusual because Wesport would usually have the rain while places further inland would have the snow.

Match 9th 2023 was the ultimate example of fine lines with snowfall in this country. It rained below 200ft asl in Clare but most locations above that had 36-48 hours of snow. The Arome & Arpege were spot on for my location. The below shows what can happen in marginal events so @Kermit.de.frog is correct. Somewhere north of that boundary line will experience heavy snow should that boundary line be south of our north coast obviously!

The 12z GFS drops the boundary line a good deal further south and is similar to the ICON. Overall, the LP system is a little flatter. GFS has a propensity to drop Atlantic lows further south as the event draws nearer so this is not a surprise. GFS shows a snow to sleet event away from inland Ulster and north Connacht.

GEM looks like it's dropping that boundary line further south too

So as is quite often the case we have a meeting of minds between the gfs and ukmo. The ukmo is significantly milder than its morning run with the proper cold barely clinging to the North Coast!! The gfs does go for some transient snow for the North Midlands. Could well be disruptive but will wash away 6 hours later. Ukmo for reference

In the meantime the clock ticks to see can we do anything better as February goes on

Perhaps where you live, it's nudged everything further North, basically a line from Sligo to Louth will do very well. For the rest of the country the window is closing

The change in weather after all the mild weather will be a bit of a shock to the system. The ECM looks good for many away from the south. Hopefully now it comes off. No more further movements north, but without blocking that's always a risk