Weather for Hiking this Weekend???

K09

Hi,

I hope to hike Carrauntoohil this weekend. Any idea what the weather is going to be like there?
Heard it will rain but showers should be ok???

Thanks.

fergalr

K09 wrote: »

Hi,

I hope to hike Carrauntoohil this weekend. Any idea what the weather is going to be like there?
Heard it will rain but showers should be ok???

Thanks.

Met Eireann says:

On Saturday morning, rain will spread to all areas, turning heavy in places and accompanied by brisk, southeast to east winds. Rain will become confined to northern areas on Saturday night but will still be heavy at times there; elsewhere will have clear spells and occasional showers, with strong southwest winds. Early on Sunday, strong westerly winds will set in across the country, with gales in exposed places; throughout the day there will be a mixture of sunny spells and passing showers.

So, basically, the outlook is that if you don't even know how to find a weather forecast, you should not be attempting to climb in the reeks this weekend.

Down South

try yr.no for forecast or the mountain forecast on accuweather.com

K09

fergalr wrote: »

So, basically, the outlook is that if you don't even know how to find a weather forecast, you should not be attempting to climb in the reeks this weekend.

I'm looking for a forecast more specific to Kerry!! Not a general country forecast. :rolleyes:

NathanKingerlee

Try http://www.windguru.com.
Very heavy rain, cloudy & windy on Sat, some rain probably falling as sleet/hail. Gales on Sun.

Evil Phil

I use accuweather, here's the forcast for the reeks.

Mickeroo

hitting snowdnia myself this weekend,weather looks shocking! ah winter walking,cant beat it

fergalr

K09 wrote: »

I'm looking for a forecast more specific to Kerry!! Not a general country forecast. :rolleyes:

Ah, fair enough - that said, when the time you want the forecast for is 3/4 days away, I wouldn't put that much more faith in the very specific forecasts over than the more general met eireann ones. Just because any Irish forecast is so approximate that far out, that the increased precision of the fine grained forecasts tends to be irrelevant compared to the overall inaccuracy of the situation. I think of it like how a really precise measurement is misleading in the presence of high inaccuracy, if you know what I mean?

For fine grained forecasts, I like windguru, as already mentioned. Even though its designed for surfing, I've gotten good use out of its forecasts for hillwalking in the past.

Also, as already said, if you don't know exactly what you are doing, this is probably not the best weekend to go up into the reeks.

Fresh_Air

For fine grained forecasts, I like windguru, as already mentioned. Even though its designed for surfing, I've gotten good use out of its forecasts for hillwalking in the past.[/quote]

I checked out windguru this morning and although it does give a very detailed information it is only relevant to costal areas (becuase it is for surfers). If you want to go hillwalking in the Wicklow or Dublin mountains is a forcast for sea level in Bray or Brittas Bay going to be any use to you up in the hills?

fergalr

Fresh_Air wrote: »

For fine grained forecasts, I like windguru, as already mentioned. Even though its designed for surfing, I've gotten good use out of its forecasts for hillwalking in the past.

I checked out windguru this morning and although it does give a very detailed information it is only relevant to costal areas (becuase it is for surfers). If you want to go hillwalking in the Wicklow or Dublin mountains is a forcast for sea level in Bray or Brittas Bay going to be any use to you up in the hills?

Well, as I see it, its like this - if we had a dedicated mountain forecast in Ireland I'd use that in a heartbeat over windguru.
But given that we don't have that, pretty much all forecasts you see are going to be for the lower level areas.

Again, I don't put much faith into the fine grain forecasts when they are much ahead of time, because the weather in Ireland is very changeable and unpredictable, so the fine details are liable to be very innaccurate ahead of time. If Met Eireann manage to get the general weather situation for the country even vaguely right more than about 4 days ahead, I'm generally pretty impressed. Given that unpredictability, what are you going to do about it?

I find that windgurus models and data seem to give pretty accurate predictions for what it is that they predict, and generally, I'd make use of it the evening before planning to go into the hills. For example, if I was in mayo and wanted to go up the mountains there, I'd look at the rain levels and the wind speeds for the nearby beaches on windguru. Yes, these aren't the same as the rain and wind in the hills, and I've to do some amount of inference from them, but I find I'm better off than just working off the regional met eireann forecasts.

When its a few days away, if I can get a general idea from met eireann whether we expect a storm or a calm, a clear sky or a torrential downpour, then I think we're doing well.
Thats just my experience of the state of weather forecasting in Ireland - the people in the weather forum might be able to tell us more about whether this sort of way of looking at things is sound or not...