The Explainer
3 Jan 2020
How does Met Éireann decide on weather warnings?
00:00
In Ireland, we really do love talking about the weather - and often guiding the importance of these conversations is Met Éireann's colour coding system.It has been in use over the past decade, but it's often not that straight-forward. Some weather conditions with lower ratings have felt the same as others with higher ratings, sometimes they're announced at the last minute, or others seem to signal impending doom pass without incident.Joining us in studio is TheJournal.ie reporter Sean Murray, and we speak to the national meteorological service's head of forecasting Evelyn Cusack, who talks about what goes on behind the scenes when meteorologists are looking at looming bad weather, what considerations are made when deciding to alert the public on bad weather - and why Storm Lorenzo seemed like it was going to be worse than it actually was.