They might be often wrong but at least they are trying

Hammered hippie

My hobby is an outdoor one in the west of Ireland. Unfortunately it happens more often than not that Met Éirror is not as acurate as I hoped (or just completely wrong) with their predictions.
Fortunately good news came to me recently. It seems that Met Éirror has made a move that will improve their accuracy dramatically. Statistically it will basically increase their observation points fivefold.
It used to be that they relied for their meteorological observations on one farmer in a field near Dublin. The man stared in the sky and also provided them with a forecast for the next day, saving them a lot of time so they could go an BBQ with their Dublin pals. Now it has come to my attention that they have drastically improved their way of observation. Not just one farmer, but at least five of them are now doing their observations and forecasts. Unfortunately they still are all in one field close to Dublin. Imagine the power of their forecast if they get the money to move all those five farmers and spread them over the whole of Ireland. They might actually get some kind of accuracy when it comes to predicting the weather in the west, north or south. If we are very lucky one of those farmers then might even be able to tell what that big blue thing on the map is west of Ireland. There are suspicions that this big blue object on the map has something to do with the difference between what the farmer in Dublin observed and what actually happened in the west.
All good news there as far as I can see. Met Éirror is really paving the way for state of the art statistically sound weather predictions. Soon enough their 12 hour prediction might be a little less unpredictable

mike65

Satire FTW! :pac:

Mike

Deep Easterly

The West of Ireland? is there such a place? Thought that place was only the stuff of myth and legend.

lucernarian

Lol

*tips hat at the thread*

There's a lot to be said in favour of the HIRLAM weather model that Met Éireann uses. Here she be in her youthful years:

Hammered hippie

That's not the early years of the Hirlam System...that commodore is a picture of what is soon to come at Met Eirror.
Today it was supposed to stay more or less dry here. Well..I have been washed away by 2 hour long torrential deluges that would have made it into the bible if ever paper had been waterproof.

No serious. There is a huge difference between dry and cloudy and the actual cascade of downpoor I encountered. And it was only the 12 hour forecast that predicted dry weather. Dry <-> torrential rain.....it is a big difference...especially in the eye of the public.

It is my opinion that the nerds and goofs at Met Eirror have no real right of publishing their often very wrong data. Even on the weather forecast on TV I have seen them predicting sunny times when the map behind them showed fat rain clowds.

3 out of ten times they are dead wrong, 2 out of ten times they are wrong 2 out of ten times they are sligthy wrong and 3 out of ten times they have it right here for the west. And that is the 12-24 hour forecast.

Just my observation. And I am still drying from this unpredicted 2 hour deluge.

StratoQ

Hammered hippie wrote: »

That's not the early years of the Hirlam System...that commodore is a picture of what is soon to come at Met Eirror.
Today it was supposed to stay more or less dry here.

More or less dry? I dont think so.

The forecast made yesterday evening was for rain/showers to commence in Cork/Kerry and spread further north and east to much of Munster/Connaught and south Leinster.

At this time of year thundery outbreaks of rain can often be expected. So you had a 2 hour deluge.

Big deal.

Hammered hippie

Since I got drenched beyond belief and my equipment is now broken
Yes it was a big deal

The prediction a day ahead showed a cloud...but no rain over connaught.
Rain over southwest Munster..yes..but not much
It wasnot until the morning its self that the prediction rapidly was adapted to what was happening. Later that day the observation was completely corrected to what was happening.

Mind you that most of the times when it gets a bit too hard on Met Eirror they just fall back to predicting the weather for Dublin and thats it. That is what is biting me the most. As soon as they get lost they just issue a nation wide something that only applies for Dublin.

Today the Galway races were nearly canceled because the prediction was one of cats and dogs falling from the sky. In truth it turned out to be a perfectly sunny beautifull day. How wrong does it have to be?
If you want we can hang out for a while in this thread and I can show you how often and how wrong the prediction really is.

I enjoyed the unforseen lovely day anyways.

squonk

While I do think they have a Dublin bias myself, at the same time, there is trouble being completely accurate when you have the possibility of showers bubbling up anywhere this time of year.

What equipment got broken on you? Camera? Telescope? Just curious.

Deep Easterly

squonk wrote: »

While I do think they have a Dublin bias myself,

I am not so sure Squonk, the gereral consensus this side is that the south, and especially the Cork area seems to get more attention from the Met than any other part of the country. I have noticed this myself recently on the tv forecasts in particular. I think Met Eireann must have taken that gob****e Cromwell's motto "To hell or to Connacht" and exchanged it for "To hell with Connacht"!

Danno

I think the problem with Met Eireann is the lack of stations around the country, and therefore cannot get a good handle on local/regional conditions under certain weather setups.

Deep Easterly

Danno wrote: »

I think the problem with Met Eireann is the lack of stations around the country, and therefore cannot get a good handle on local/regional conditions under certain weather setups.

Have to agree with you there Danno, there is an appallling lack of stations around the country, none more so than in my own region, the Sligo/Roscommom/Longford area, and the southeast region between Wicklow and South Tipp. I think it is odd that on the Met Eireann hourly data page that Valentia, Cork Airport and Roaches Point are all represented, despite their relatively close proximity to each other; then you have Casement and Dublin Airport, which are just a few miles apart also represented. I have no problem with this at all and embrace it completely, my problem is why other parts of the country are not represented with such vigour.

old boy

if you have firefox you can download a few weather stations, the one i have is quite reliable, it gives the forecast by the hour

Danno

AFAIK, every Garda station in the country monitored climate data between 1951 and 1980. I remember reading a book on Laois in Portlaoise Library about 15 years ago and it listed quite detailled data for every part of the county. One thing that surprised me that Stradbally in Co. Laois gets under 750mm rain per year and was one of the driest parts of the county. I must take a visit there again and see can I find it once again.

Mothman

Danno wrote: »

AFAIK, every Garda station in the country monitored climate data between 1951 and 1980. I remember reading a book on Laois in Portlaoise Library about 15 years ago and it listed quite detailled data for every part of the county. One thing that surprised me that Stradbally in Co. Laois gets under 750mm rain per year and was one of the driest parts of the county. I must take a visit there again and see can I find it once again.

I have a list of 700 rain recording stations. A huge number (c270) are garda stations commencing recording in the early 40s and most stopped recording during late 80s and early 90s.
The annual rainfall using 61-90 data for Stradbally is 807mm.

Of the 700 stations more than 300 stations are open.
The met office rely on volunteers such as gardai, NPWS, Teagasc etc etc to run monitoring equipment such as rain gauges.

Danno

Do you have a map of the stations?