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

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The heaviest snow being produced by storm "Emma" is currently over southwest England. Bands of lighter snow, mixed with ice pellets and various other semi-frozen types in the southeast, will continue until these heavier bands arrive late this evening and overnight. It still appears likely that 20 to 50 cm of snow will fall over large portions of the country, tapering to 10 to 30 cm across most of the north and 5 to 15 cm near north coast of Ulster. Meanwhile, some sea effect continues across the north mainly and this will just merge with the advancing storm later tonight. That could lead to some locally heavier totals so that the overall snowfall left on the ground by late Friday or early Saturday may be quite variable in the range of 30 to 60 cms for many.

There likely will be some pockets of more mixed precipitation near the south coast and perhaps in patchy form up the east coast, but I think all locations will have at least some intervals of heavy accumulating snow. There will likely be some outbreaks of thunder-snow (or thunder-sleet) tonight and Friday. Blizzard-like conditions will occur regardless of snowfall rates because of strong winds blowing the snow already received plus the newer snow. I mentioned yesterday that the snow could be wetter, in particular across the south and east, but this does not necessarily mean "wet snow" in terms of melting while it falls, more that the moisture content would be higher than the sea effect snow, and therefore this snow might not blow around as readily, but will tend to stick to surfaces (like tree branches and infrastructure) raising the risk level for power outages.

As to local variations, keep a close eye on reports in threads, a complex storm like this is bound to produce some large variations from one location to another, and one key to that may be shadowing effects of higher ground, if you're to the east or south of higher terrain you might get heavier amounts, and to the north or west, lesser amounts of snow than some nearby reports.

Winds will continue strong east to northeast 50 to 80 km/hr for most and could gust to 100 km/hr at times near east coast and later along the south coast (from east to southeast). Kerry and southwest Cork will likely experience some very strong gusts late Friday as the centre of low pressure moves just offshore towards the west-northwest. High seas will create some coastal flooding near the high tides on Friday and Friday night, both on south and east coast but it will be more severe on the south coast.

The storm will taper off to intervals of light snow or sleet by Saturday but the outlook is rather uncertain with several more systems trying to move the cold air and perhaps being less than totally successful, so that the period Sunday to Thursday of next week may continue rather cold and there could be one more significant snowfall in that period.


oh wow passes out