Laois Weekend Weather
Forecasts courtesy of Irish Weather Online
TRENDS for the week of 2 to 8 Jan 2021
Temperatures will average 3 to 5 deg below normal values. Precipitation will be slight, confined to a few outbreaks of sleet or light snow, in most places 10 to 20 per cent of normal values.– Sunshine will be 25 to 50 per cent above normal, closer to 3 hours a day than the normal value of about 2.
FORECASTS
TODAY will start out rather cloudy, any remaining frost (in the southern inland counties mainly) will dissipate, but temperatures will be capped at around 4 to 6 C in a northerly breeze of 30 to 50 km/hr. A few sleety showers will move south through at least western and central portions, more isolated in the east, and these could produce snow on hills, but amounts will be slight.
TONIGHT will bring partial clearing and lows -4 to -1 C, coldest inland western counties. There will still be a slight chance of isolated wintry showers.
SUNDAY will have a mixture of cloud and sunshine, isolated wintry showers, and winds turning more to the northeast, rather brisk at times by afternoon (40 to 70 km/hr). This could promote some bands of mixed wintry showers from the Irish Sea into central Leinster, but upper parameters are a bit marginal for snow except possibly on higher slopes. Highs 3 to 6 C.
MONDAY will be partly cloudy to sunny, with isolated wintry showers, and moderate northeast winds, lows -4 to -1 C and highs 3 to 6 C.
TUESDAY will be partly cloudy with a few passing wintry showers in north and east, lows near -3 C and highs near 4 to 6 C.Around mid-week, winds will return to a northerly direction and a fresh batch of cold air will sweep south with mixed wintry showers, still looking a bit marginal for full-on snow or wintry cold, but certainly a significant chill with winds increasing to 50-80 km/hr at times, highs each day 2 to 5 C. This northerly seems to be breaking into two parts on some guidance with a day of slightly milder westerly flow coming near the end of next week and perhaps raising temperatures briefly to about 7 or 8 C, before dropping back again on the weekend of 9th-10th.
Some guidance then seems to raise the prospect of a colder air mass pushing west from Russia into the Baltic and North Sea regions, and this could eventually deliver somewhat more wintry conditions to Ireland, but at the same time other guidance is downplaying that trend (keeping it over the Baltic at its closest) and allowing weak pulses of milder air to feed in from the northwest, although it might also remain frosty at night in that scenario. Either way there is no huge change signalled towards the end of two weeks of forthcoming slight variations in this northerly cold spell.