Could the Beast be making its way back to Ireland?

IRELAND could be facing another severe bout of weather early next year.

Met Éireann has confirmed there is an increased chance temperatures will plummet early in the new year thanks to an atmospheric event known as sudden stratospheric warming. This is where the temperature suddenly rises high up in the stratosphere, between ten and 50 kilometres above the North Pole.

It can result in a chain reaction that leads to very cold conditions from eastern Europe and Russia.

The phenomenon, which in Ireland usually leads to cold periods, begins 50km into the atmosphere in the high-altitude jet stream, which usually flows from west to east, bringing relatively warm and wet air from the Atlantic into Ireland.

But in the event of a sudden stratospheric warming, a disturbance hits the jetstream, pushing its waves down towards the Arctic and reversing the stream from east to west. As the air is compressed over this region, it begins to warm. This leads to high pressure over the North Atlantic, blocking the usual flow of mild air that flows to Ireland. Instead, colder air from the east is sucked over the country.

A Met Éireann meteorologist explained: ‘A sudden stratospheric warming... increases the chance of what we call blocking weather or slow-moving weather. This can bring either warmer or colder weather for the time of year.

‘At this time of year, it would most likely mean an increased chance of us getting an easterly flow. This would bring air from the Continent which is a lot colder than the usual westerly flow coming in over the sea.

‘However, we won’t know what is going to happen until the middle of January.’

The Beast from the East, which hit the country in March, combined with Storm Emma to wreak havoc countrywide.

The good news is Met Éireann says it will be ‘largely dry and settled for the last few days of this year and the first few days of the new year’.