Laois Midweek Weather
Laois People Forecasts courtesy of Irish Weather Online
TRENDS for the week of 3 to 9 Jan 2021
— Temperatures will average 3 to 5 deg below normal.
— Precipitation will be slight in many areas, with mixed wintry showers, amounting to 10 to 25 per cent of normal precipitation amounts at this time of year.
— Sunshine will be 25 to 50 per cent above normal.
FORECASTS
Tonight will become clear again in many areas with lows falling to -5 C in the west, -2 C east.
MONDAY will bring another round of increasing cloud in northeast winds, outbreaks of wintry showers, and the snow chances increase somewhat with slightly colder air aloft, but it will still be a similar mixed bag of precipitation types over a fairly confined area of central Leinster. There is also some chance of mixed wintry showers near the south coast. Winds east-northeast 40 to 60 km/hr will add quite a chill to daytime highs of only 1 to 4 C.
TUESDAY will continue in a similar pattern, partly cloudy with isolated wintry showers, moderate northeast winds, and lows -5 to -2, highs 1 to 5 C.
WEDNESDAY will see winds turning more northerly for a while, which will change the distribution of the mixed wintry showers, the west and north being more favoured for them. Winds north to northwest 40 to 60 km/hr. Lows in the range of -4 to -1 C and highs 3 to 6 C.
The outlook beyond that is for several more days of quite cold and slightly unsettled weather in a moderate northerly flow, possibly getting even a bit colder by the weekend of 9th-10th, although guidance begins to diverge into two camps after that, one saying repeated reinforcements of cold from a north through northeast direction, the other implying that the blocking will slowly break down as high pressure sinks further south, allowing a weak push of milder Atlantic air masses, although still with some frosts at night as it would not be a complete return to “mild zonality.” No hunches as to which set of maps to believe, but noting that this early breakdown concept has come and gone a couple of times already, so it may just be small signals getting over-amplified down the road.
— Peter O’Donnell for IWO