Gerry Murphy

It's actually quite tricky to say where it's going to be affected.

That's why there's quite a number of counties in it.

The thunderstorms are expected to be quite hit and miss, but they will predominantly be likely to be more towards the west and north of the country, but also because of the high temperatures in parts of the Midlands, some of those counties are included.

So that thunderstorm warning will be valid until 6pm and it's for Cavan,

Donegal and Monaghan and Ulster, all of Connacht.

In Munster, Clare and Tipperary, mainly to the west.

And in Leinster, Kildare, Leash, Longford, Meath, Offaly and West Meath, that's Midlands and to the north.

So as you tend more towards the, from the Midlands to the north and the west, then the heavier showers and thunderstorms are most likely.

Yes, well, there were actually... It depends on the nature of the lightning strikes.

Last night, there were a large number of lightning strikes off the northwest coast, but they didn't give substantial amounts of rain except for a few of them.

The threat with thunderstorms is that they could potentially...

drop an awful lot of rain in a very short space of time.

And when that happens, then it means that the rain is torrential and that there is potential for flash flooding, difficult visibility and very difficult driving in those circumstances, which means in a heavy thunderstorm or very heavy shower, people would just need to stay down, stay very, very slow, possibly stop if they need to.

But the shower will pass eventually.

But it can drop a lot of rain in a very short space of time.

Well, in very heavy thundery showers, hailstones can occur.

Now, we don't tend to get the hailstones of that size in Ireland because for hailstones of that magnitude, you need very, very significant updrafts and the temperature contrast between the surface and the upper air

needs to be very great indeed.

And that usually occurs in continental areas, both in America and in Europe.

While we may get hailstones and they may be a reasonable size, it's unlikely that we would get hailstones of that magnitude because the updrafts in the air over Ireland in the current scenario are not of that magnitude.