Status orange weather warnings were appropriate for the counties that experienced the harshest conditions of the cold snap that started over the weekend, Met Éireann has said.
In several counties in the south, west and midlands, orange warnings for snow and ice or snow and rain were issued lasting until late on Sunday, but many households woke to a blanket of snow and faced hazardous road conditions on Monday morning.
Some 34,000 homes, farms and businesses were without power, mostly in counties Cork, Kerry, Limerick, Tipperary, Kilkenny, Carlow and Laois, while 40,000 people were without water in Cork, Limerick, Kerry and Tipperary.
Schools were closed in several counties, and some public transport services were cancelled.
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However, Met Éireann forecaster Aoife Kealy said the orange warning was the correct one for the conditions experienced.
“A constant watch is kept on the weather and when a potential extreme event is noted we weigh up the probabilities of what will happen and issue warnings accordingly.
“For different parameters, like rain, wind or snow, there are different thresholds that you would expect to be met and different possible impacts that have to be taken into account, before deciding on the warning.”
Accumulations of snow between 10cm and 30cm would meet the threshold for an orange snow warning she said.
“With any warning there is the possibility that there will be locally higher accumulations, and in the case of snow that would be mostly be on higher ground or where there is drift. That is what we saw this time; widely speaking, there was 10cm-30cm of snow accumulated, with some locally higher totals.”
While some who found themselves badly affected by the snow may have thought a red warning would have been more appropriate to allow householders and local authorities to better prepare, orange warnings should not be dismissed as signifying moderate events, Ms Kealy said.
“It’s important to stress that orange warnings are a quite-severe warning. They’re issued when dangerous weather conditions are expected, which could pose a threat to life and property. It is important that people are prepared for that, when given an orange warning. It’s not something to be ignored or to be expected to be only minor.”
Red warnings, she said, signified events of quite a different order of magnitude.
“A red warning is a reflection of very rare, very dangerous weather conditions from intense meteorological phenomena. Red being the highest that level we can go to, it is issued when, essentially, the weather is almost as extreme as it can get.”
Yellow, orange and red warnings were not the only tool Met Éireann used to communicate the severity of weather events, she said.
“We keep in contact and regularly brief our colleagues across the Government’s emergency co-ordination group so that all local authorities and Government sectors are prepared and ready to put into place whatever actions they need to in order to deal with the event.”
This covers preparations for the weather, actions during the event and measures to deal with its aftermath, she said.
“In local authority sectors, if they hear the word orange they’ll know what that means. It’s a very good guide for them, but we don’t just issue the colour, we give them a briefing in terms of possible weather conditions that may occur, in specific areas, and of course all that information is available on our website as well.”
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