Severe Weather Snow / Ice Weds 28 FEB ( Onwards ) ** READ MOD NOTE POST#1**

M.T. Cranium wrote: »

The only conclusion I am drawing about "Emma" is that one model will look good and most of the others won't, by Saturday.

The logical outcome given the strength of the cold easterly flow and the generally flabby look of Emma so far, is that this storm will be shunted west shortly after breaking through the 49N parallel, but the increasing gradient and frontal zone will allow heavy snow to develop over most of the southern half of the country. Further north, I think that despite stable low-level parameters, the sea effect process will continue at perhaps a reduced intensity and will keep a steady light to moderate snow coming inland on ESE winds across north Leinster into inland Connacht, and most of east Ulster also.

There are going to be pockets of low snowfall or even dry conditions perhaps, but too risky to fine tune this red warning, in any case its effect will be to deter people from making trips from some low-impact areas into the bad situation developing across most of the country, so in any case no nationwide red warning is ever likely to totally verify, that's not how weather actually works, they have to call it for the overall impact which could include some power outages because I think in some cases heavy wet snow combined with sleet in the south may bring down trees on transmission lines (maybe you have more of these buried than what I am used to here).

So in terms of detail, I am going to leave that to the morning update in my forecast, thinking generally a patchwork quilt of 20 to 40 cm amounts with the highest totals being around Wicklow and central inland southern counties, tapering to a general 10 to 20 inland northwest and 5 to 15 coastal northwest although a few near zero pockets won't surprise anyone. Some models show the track into Kerry, if that verified then northern totals would probably be higher.

I also think there is some chance of this snowfall event not really ending at all but continuing intermittently Friday night and resuming Saturday as a potential second low forms behind Emma and tries to duplicate the feat.

So it's a case of slowly diminishing sea effect snowfalls Dublin and north/west being overtaken by the gradual northward advance of frontal snows, probably a gap between these but in some cases perhaps just a merged non-stop snowfall (this more likely in central counties still getting the last dregs of sea effect when frontal snow moves in).