Jan 2025 - Snow & Freezing Conditions - Discussion PART II

We look after two cats and have a little house filled with straw for them out the back. They're feral and would never stay inside. Best you can do for them is feed them more often then usual and make sure their house is dry.

I don't think the country got such widespread heavy snow over a large part of the country and prolonged cold as this week since Emma in 2018. Of course some different localised areas have gotten similar each winter but not at this scale.

Johnstown in northwest Kilkenny recorded -5.9c.

A hard frost with freezing fog. - 4 presently. No schools open locally though they were Monday and Tuesday. I don't get it, we've had harder frosts here many times before. I can't help but believe the media hysteria makes people think it's worse than it is. Yes, check on the elderly and watch your footing, do all the things you've done before in cold snaps. It was Yellow at worst if you buy into the warnings mullarkey. Some Met E on the TV last night stating the cold was 'going nowhere' when in fact much milder weather is 72 hrs away. He would obviously know that. Our national weather service have not had a good few days.

So I think Casement ended up with one of the coldest in the end this morning and yet no orange for Dublin yet parts of the country that didn't need an orange warning got one.

Not good enough Met Eireann, letal out there in Dublin his morning.

All good…ended up bringing her into the house last night. She's a hardy thing in fairness

You should be okay for Friday I would think so wouldn't stress it

It was just the most brief dusting and might have been local, just giving us a little tease of what might have been! It's proper frosty this morning and everywhere is white!

Yeah, I'm far from a ME basher if you look back on my posts, but beyond the areas where there is a lot of snow lying its wrong having an orange warning for frost. If its techincally an orange warning criteria event (and at 0c this morning in my area, it wasn't) then those criteria need to be looked at. This is especially so as there seems to be a view now (I don't know whether its correct or not - it may be insurance policy wording driven) that you will be uninsured if you do certain things despite an Orange warning.

As for the schools staying closed or opening at 11am (beyond Monday - that was quite correct following the recent snowfall) - Jesus we used to get frost 20 days a year in the 1980s and even 1990s, if schools opened at 11am for every one of those days then we would have lost a week and a half's worth of school per year. I get a school being closed or opening late in Charleville, here in Cork city today its unjustifiable (and there's plenty frost and even some unmelted snow in my estate and at my local school - not saying there isn't). Just drive slowly. If the odd (and its the odd) teacher lives in an area where they are snowbound their class can be dealt with the same way we would if they were sick. Daft to close whole schools to facilitate the odd pupil or teacher. The consequence of that mass closing is that needless journeys are being made dropping kids to grandparents and the like at 8.30am (because private businesses are open so parents are going to work as normal) only for those Grandparents to have to drop the kids to late opening schools at 11am. That's bananas. Interesting that the montessori / pre-schools in my area are operating as normal (or opening at 10am at latest)…..

In Clonmel where I am the main roads to the schools are now fine once people sensibly driver, the footpaths are death traps in the entire town and people are walking on the road as it’s safer, throw a lot of kids into the mix aswell as cars stopping and starting and you’re only asking for trouble. That’s before the issue of the majority of housing estates still being froze over and people can’t get in and out and so busses won’t run for obvious reasons. It makes absolute sense for schools to remain closed where I am for example. To suggest otherwise is just silly.

Car battery died with the cold last night. It hit -5 in north Kerry.

Waiting on breakdown service to arrive. He phoned to say he's coming from Dingle. Can't understand that one!

Met eireann are in a difficult place now with all these warnings. They got the snow warnings great but in my opinion the frost was nothing exceptional last night and I'm in one of the cold -6 spots. The frost tonight will probably have a lower Base to work from . With the overuse of yellow warnings, the fear is that now that orange warnings will follow suit. Incidentally last January it froze on the 13th,14th,15th,16th,17th and 18th between -2 and -8 . There was no orange warnings and my little one attended school at 9am every morning. This morning the school reopens at 11pm because of the orange warning.

I drove from Kerry to Dublin during the snow last year. Navigating the trucks that slid all over the shop on the barna gap was an event I don't want to repeat. Then there was the M7 that was a single line of traffic.