Weather watch
WEATHER WATCH: Thursday 9pm to Sunday 3pm (July 17th to July 20th 2014); Heavy rain showers, hail showers, thunder and lightning showers, spot flooding, high humidity and locally damaging winds under showers. A slow-moving low pressure system in the Bay of Biscay, west of France is slowly pushing north creating a southeast airflow over Ireland. Very warm air from over France will mix with moisture-laden Atlantic air giving rise to the development of heavy thundery showers.
These showers will drift northwestwards over Ireland over the coming days giving showers to many areas, possibly merging to form a prolonged front of rain at times. Owing to the high humidity, thunderstorms will be likely to develop, potentially violent storms in a few places with very high rainfall in short time-frames giving rise to spot flooding as the very dry ground will be unable to cope with deluges.
Hail, thunder and lightning will occur in some places also with damaging gusty winds under such showers possible too. Thursday night/Friday morning and Saturday afternoon look like the two time-frames seeing the worst of the showers. Rainfall amounts will vary from place to place owing to the random nature of showers, but most if not all areas should see between 10mm and 30mm.
Another notable feature will be the warm nights as temperatures will hold in the high teens even low 20s in towns until late in the night time when they will briefly drop to around 15c – so it will be uncomfortable for many, especially coupled with the high humidity.
This “weather watch” serves to make people aware of the “potential” for the weather conditions described to materialise and should not be treated as a “weather warning”. Should confidence increase, a “warning” will be issued in due course.
Courtesy of www.laoisweather.com