The big chill won’t budge

... as 30% of households have to go without heat to reduce costs

THE spell of chilly weather is expected to continue for a few days, at least, with temperatures plummeting below freezing tonight.

The forecast will be grim news for the one-in-three households who admitted to going without heat this winter to save cash on energy bills.

Met Éireann said the temperatures we have been experiencing for the last few days are below average for this time of the year.

And a particularly cold spell overnight tonight may see temperatures plummet as low as -2C.

However, there is good news on the horizon as a change in the direction of winds will see temperatures rise slightly as we move towards the weekend. The cold spell we are experiencing, however, will come as bad news to many householders around the country. Almost 30% have revealed that they are already rationing their energy use in a bid to keep costs down, a new survey for Switcher.ie shows.

Forecaster Liz Walsh said that we are currently in a ‘cold northerly regime’ which is set to last until tomorrow when it will still be cold, but the mercury will become ‘slightly warmer, slightly milder’.

She told the Irish Daily Mail: ‘We’ve had a lot of cold, bright, sunny weather around. And there have been some scattered showers along western coasts.

‘Today, we will probably see a gradual increase in cloud amounts, and probably a little bit of an increase in the number of showers happening. Some of those could be wintry, especially on high ground. And we will still have frost and icy patches tonight.

‘But by the time we get to (tomorrow) we are looking at variable cloud and sunny spells.

‘Winds will be starting to turn more to the north-west, which is a slightly warmer direction to the northerly winds we have now. And this is going to make sure that the temperatures rise to between 5C and 10C as opposed to 4C to 8C as they were yesterday and today.’

Temperatures may rise to between 7C and 10C on Sunday.