Northern Ireland weather: Met office says big thaw to clear ice and snow with temperatures to reach 10C

According to the Met Office, the next five days will look milder across the Province, with temperatures eventually reaching 10C.

"Northern Ireland will be one of the first places to see the shift in weather type from cold-dominated to a pattern which will see daytime highs of 10C or more," a spokesman for the forecaster said.

"This is being driven by an Atlantic pattern bringing more unsettled but milder conditions to Northern Ireland and, in time, the rest of the UK. However, it will be a gradual shift for England as some parts of the southeast won’t see the milder conditions until Tuesday."

Tonight in NI is to be a dry evening with clear spells and a frost in places - the temperature dipping to -1C in places. However, cloud and outbreaks of rain will spread east overnight with a southerly breeze picking up and temperatures recovering.

Tomorrow in NI will be a cloudy and misty day with occasional rain or drizzle, becoming milder with any lying snow gradually thawing and a maximum temperature of 6C.

And from Sunday onwards it will really be possible to really feel the mercury rising; There will be a cloudy and breezy few days with a little rain at times, mainly across the hills, but feeling much milder than the past week.

Freezing temperatures caused beautiful wintry scenes across Northern Ireland over recent days, but with some bitterly cold readings.

On Tuesday temperatures plummeted as low as -8.4C at Katesbridge and -7.1 at Castlederg.

Wednesday was not just as cold, with Katesbridge dropping to -7.8C; Derrylin in Fermanagh -6.6C and Aldergrove -4.5C

And on Thursday night Katesbridge dropped to -5.1C while Killylane, near Larne, saw -3.6C.

Drumnadrochit near Inverness in the Highlands hit minus 10.4C in the early hours of Thursday, making it the coldest recorded temperature of the year so far in the UK.

Topcliffe in north Yorkshire got down to minus 7.4C, the coldest in England, and Manchester Airport was forced to close both its runways due to heavy snowfall.