Sizzle set to cool but mercury to maintain mid-20s

While sizzling temperatures will cool slightly in the coming days, the good weather is set to continue into next week remaining in the mid-20s in most parts , Met Éireann has said.

Sun-worshippers in the south and south east will be satisfied with temperatures of 23 to 26 degrees tomorrow. However it will be a little cloudier in the north and west with cooler temperatures of 17 to 20 degrees possible. There is an isolated risk of thundery showers, Met Éireann forecaster Joanna Donnelly said.

“There is a small change expected tonight as a frontal band comes down. It’s not going to bring rain, but it is going to change the profile a little,” Ms Donnelly said. With light northerly winds, a slight change in the air mass might give rise to the “odd shower” but this should be “very isolated”, Ms Donnelly said.

Sunday is forecast to be warm with good sunny spells and highs of 20 to 25 degrees. It will be cloudier and cooler along Atlantic coasts.

After the weekend, the weather will be mostly dry with “no rain on the charts at all” and it will become “hot” by the middle of next week, she said.

Today has been one of the hottest so far in this heatwave spell being caused by "a large blocking high" over the country, she said. A temperature of 29.2 degrees was recorded at the Oak Park weather station in Carlow today. Stations at Casement Aerodrome in Dublin and Ballyhaise in Cavan recorded temperatures of 28 degrees.

Earlier this week it reached 29.5 degrees in Shannon. The all time high of 33 degrees – recorded sometime in the 1800s – has yet to be matched. More recent highs such as 31 degrees in July, 2006 recorded in Baldonnel and 31.5 in Carlow in 1995.