National: Cold spell Charts/ Media/ Forecasts (Strictly no chit-chat) (15/12/2010)

ME RTE 1 forecasts are still being very short term in their predictions, they've not talked about anything beyond tomorrow on either of the broadcasts this morning, the only hints are the 4 following days maps that are shown without comment at the end of the broadcast that have snow symbols on them scattered around the country.

I get the impression that they are desperately trying not to create a situation where they're backed into a corner on precise "what", and given the way the models appear to be varying, I can understand that, they get as much grief for a wrong bad weather forecast as they do for not forecasting it at all, and they've had experience of both recently, there was almost no advance notification of the 15 Cm that hit Ashbourne at the end of the last batch of snow falls.

MT seems to be painting a very thought provoking canvas, and the models are backing that up, a mixture of 62/3, 75 & 82, with the worst aspects of all of them combined into one event is certainly something that is not going to be a fun event for a lot of people.

I've seen the 82 pictures that were posted earlier, I wasn't here then, and it looks like the Dublin area took a big hit. I know from local comments that Ashbourne was well hammered, what I don't know is how long it lasted. In the South west of the UK, it was about a week before it was safe to venture too far if I remember correctly, the roads were then passable with care.

The latest 5 day on ME is showing some possibly challenging conditions for the South coast on Monday, but very little throughout for the East Coast and Leinster area, which seems to still be very much at variance with almost all the other comments and posters.

Time will tell

Steve