Ireland will be impacted by four seperate periods of strong winds over the next five days.
Strong gusts will effect all parts of the island on Thursday afternoon/evening (southwesterly wind), Friday morning (southerly wind), Sunday morning (southerly wind) and Sunday evening (westerly wind).
Sunday evening will produce gusts of up to 110km/h in Atlantic coastal counties, particularly in the north and west.
Periods of heavy rainfall are expected up to and including Sunday.
Saturday will be drier and less windy however.
It remains unclear if Sunday's system will meet the criteria for named storm status.
Should it do so, it would be named Storm Floris and would be the sixth named storm of the season.
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| Credit Meteociel |
Expected windy conditions later this week are the result of an energised jet stream in the North Atlantic that is developing due to a steep temperature gradient between an Arctic air mass moving deep into the southern US States (first image) and warm subtropical air mass originating from the Caribbean.
A strong stratospheric polar vortex is also helping to enhance the jet stream.The jet stream is a relatively narrow band of strong wind travelling west to east in the upper levels of the atmosphere, typically occurring at an altitude of 30,000 feet. The band often shifts north and south because jet streams follow the boundaries between hot and cold air and, ultimately, act like a conveyer belt for Atlantic depressions.