A thunderstorm warning has been issued for the north and east, following a weekend of sunshine and a vivid display of the Northern Lights on Friday night.
A status yellow thunderstorm warning has been issued by Met Éireann for Donegal, Cavan, Monaghan, Louth, Meath, Dublin, Kildare and Wicklow.
The UK Met Office has also issued a yellow thunderstorm warning for the six counties of Northern Ireland – Antrim, Armagh, Down, Fermanagh, Tyrone and Derry.
The thunderstorm warnings are in place from midday to 7pm on Sunday in the Republic, and 7.30pm in Northern Ireland.
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Separately, a yellow rain warning for the counties of Antrim, Down, Armagh, Tyrone and Derry has been issued by the UK Met Office from midday on Monday to 6am on Tuesday.
The weekend saw some glorious sunshine. Mount Dillon in Co Roscommon recorded the highest temperature of the year with 23.6 degrees on Saturday, while 23.1 degrees was recorded at Co Donegal’s Finner Camp and Malin Head.
The weather is due to break on Sunday, and Monday and Tuesday will be wet and cool across many parts of the country. It will be unsettled toward the second half of the week but warm with temperatures reaching 21 degrees on Thursday.
Friday night saw a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the public to see the aurora borealis or Northern Lights. According to the US based National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) space weather forecaster, another Earth-directed coronal mass ejection left the sun on Saturday and is expected to hit the Earth’s magnetic field on Sunday night into Monday morning.
It is expected to “lead back to severe to extreme geomagnetic storms,” the NOAA predicted.
The possibility of seeing them in Ireland will depend on cloud cover and how far south the aurora borealis goes. The Northern Lights were less visible in Irish skies on Saturday evening than they had been on Friday, due to weather conditions.
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