Newport Furnace in Mayo lived up to its name on Thursday as it recorded the hottest temperature in the country at 21.3C. Beaches and beer gardens were packed as Ireland was hotter than sun-soaked Spain.
It was the hottest day of the year so far and the west was best as temperatures soared above 21C. Holiday hot spot Barcelona was just 18C, three degrees less than Costa del Newport.
City centres were bustling as office workers enjoyed pints in sunny beer gardens while popular ice cream shops like Teddy’s in Dun Laoghaire had queues out the door. While the west saw highs of 21C, other parts of the country were still basking in the sunshine.
Temperatures topped 18C in Phoenix Park, Dublin, while the sunny southeast, Cork and Kerry saw slightly lower highs of 16C. However, there was a vast difference between daytime and night time temperatures, as they were set to plummet as low as 1C overnight.
The west usually gets the worst of the weather, but were the lucky ones yesterday- Met Éireann forecaster Aoife Kealy explained why. She said: "It’s an interesting one, quite often where there is lots of high pressure like this which originated over Scandinavia and the north sea, what happens is it creates an easterly air flow so it has taken the edge off the temperatures in the east of the country.
“So the air has been coming in from the east of the Irish sea and the sea temperatures are still relatively cool maybe 9C or so so that means that it’s a little bit cooler along the east and south and by the time it’s gotten to the west it has all that sunshine heating up with very little wind to cool it back down."
However, it’s time to grab the sunnies and hit the beach on Friday as the glorious sunshine is not set to stay. Highest temperatures will be 16C to 21C, as Dublin and the east may see slightly higher temperatures.
Things will dip from Saturday as highest temperatures will be 16C, while Sunday will be much colder at 12C. Ms Kealy continued: “There is still one more day of proper warm weather. The high pressure that has been dominating over the past while will sink away from us and let some low-pressure systems in from the Atlantic.
“Saturday won’t be the worst day, but it will be a good bit cloudier than it has been and there will be a bit of drizzle, if it was any other week you probably wouldn’t pass that much heed to it. The temperatures will feel noticeably cooler, by Saturday they will be back down to 16C at the hottest and Sunday will be even cooler at around 12C.”
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