**Storm Eunice set to bring disruptive weather to Ireland**

Storm Eunice which will effect Ireland on Friday morning and afternoon and will bring some disruptive weather with severe and damaging winds expected with heavy snowfall across western and northern areas particularly the northwest.

Schools in seven counties,which are under Red and Orange weather warnings, are to close tomorrow due to Storm Eunice.

The affected counties are Cork and Kerry, which are under a Status Red warning and Donegal, Mayo, Sligo, Leitrim and Roscommon, which are under an Orange Snow and Wind warning.

Schools in other counties will be told they can open subject to local conditions, and are being advised to keep up to date with the current weather warning and note any change to the status in their county.

Storm Eunice will be a fast moving cyclone and will also be a storm that only starts to develop later Thursday morning southwest of Ireland and north of the Azores it will quickly advance west to east towards Ireland with the center of the storm set to pass close to Munster and south Leinster which is been steered along by a very intense and fast moving jet stream with Storm Eunice developing into a serious windstorm over the early hours of Friday morning less than 24hours before it even existed. Storm Eunice will bring strong and severe gusts to many parts of Ireland but the main concern is when it reaches the southwest of Ireland it could produce gusts along coastal area there of up to 170km/hr particularly across coastal areas of Clare, Kerry and Cork with damaging winds . Some disruption is expected along with a possibility of coastal flooding.

Winds will also be strong nationwide with warnings in place

The other hazard includes snowfall on the northern flank of storm Eunice on Friday morning as colder air is drawn in across the west and north of the country with heavy precipitation transitioning from rain to falls of heavy snowfall giving accumulations especially across parts of Connacht, Ulster and the North Midlands. This may start as rain and sleet and turn rapidly to snow. The latest track on the ECMWF model and GFS model shows some disruption across western and northern areas on Friday morning with some lowland areas possibly seen 5cm of snow and even as much as 15cm with upland and mountainous areas seen some significant falls of snow between 10cm to 30cm. The freezing level is expected to be around 150MASL for some which is Meters Above Sea Level.

With some strong winds across Connacht and Ulster there will be the added risk of blizzard conditions locally and blowing snow.