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

Serious surprise here, Ashbourne SE Meath. Had to head out for a while around 1500, and at that time, the roads in the town were not an issue, the side roads were marginal depending how many people had been out before me, and it had been very light snow most of the day.

Outside the town was a different story, the (old) N2 south of Ashbourne towards 9 mile Stone was one and a half lanes, with significant banks on the side of the road where earlier overnight drifts had been cleared, but the wind was still blowing powder snow off the fields and on to the road. The minor roads to Kilbride from Ashbourne and Ratoath were impassable, due to significant drifts about 4 Ft deep that extended for some distance, so it wasn't possible to get to Kilbride today.

Since 1600, things have changed, we were clearly right on the edge of the snow, in that it was very light, but over the last couple of hours, the quantity of snow falling has increased considerably, I've just looked out of the back door, and the footprints I left when I came in have now been refilled, and the snow that was in place has been topped up again.

Looking at the weather radar, I wonder how soon this is going to stop, there looks to be a very long streamer of snow cloud all the way back across the UK that's heading for this area, with the speed that it's moving at, I am wondering if there will still be snow falling until mid day tomorrow, possibly even later.

That sentiment is borne out by the recent announcement from both Aer Lingus and Ryanair that their programmes for tomorrow are disrupted, with a significant number of cancellations up until 1100 tomorrow. That may be because they are anticipating that DAA may be struggling to clear the runways etc because of the overnight snow, but I have to wonder if this is going to last a lot longer than we thought it was.

It could be an "interesting" weekend.