The Big Freeze and 2010 Summary

Danno

Just done a BigFreeze2010 excel sheet which treats 26th November to 26th December as a one month period (November has 30 days).

http://live.laoisweather.com/files/BigFreeze2010.xls

The period returns a -2.1c mean, which includes 10 ice days and 28 nights of air frost, a mean max of +1.9c and a mean minimum of -6.0c.
Rainfall/Snowfall was 29.4mm for the period using the copper gague. A total 23.5cm of snow was measured, but never more than 12cm depth at any one time.

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A review of 2010 returns the following summary:
Mean temperature was 8.5c for the year. This value is -0.8c below normal.

Rainfall was 834.6mm for the year. This value is 43.4mm below normal.

Warmest day was May 23rd when 24.8c was recorded on the Davis.

Coldest night was Dec 24th when -13.4c was recorded on the Davis. (-14.0c on the Screen)

Wettest Day was Sep 6th when 90.9mm was recorded on the Davis. (83.3mm Copper/Sep 5th)

Strongest gust was 56mph on November 11th.

Other interesting notes: 94 air frosts and 14 ice days.

steveLFC24

Great stuff, thanks! Some crazy min temperatures in there, especially for them all to be in the space of a month.

thetonynator

14 ice days :eek: that must be some sort of record . . .one ice day in a year would be unusual . .:eek:

Danno

Fourteen Ice days is quite a feat considering the mild run of winters up to this. There were a few near-misses too with max temps of 0c, +0.1c etc... so the potential for more was there!

On another note, 2010 was pretty much thunder free here which was rather dissapointing as yours truely loves a good thunderstorm.

Overall the year of 2010 will be remembered for its brutal cold, lack of major wind, good sunshine (excluding July/August), and wet July.

Despite the cold, The headline grabber though was the wash-out All Ireland Hurling Final night when 122.2mm rain fell in 24hr period from 9pm on the 5th to 9pm on the 6th. The year still managed to be drier than normal!

Funnily enough, I thought August was a damn cold month and never remember one as cold.

BEASTERLY

One amazing fact for me is that i had snow lying on the ground here for 37 days in 2010 now ten of those were beteween 30-70% covergae the rest was 100%.

Periods with continuous lying snow: 6th-12th Jan and 27th Nov-27th Dec.

Danno

IIRC Snowcover is only regarded above 50% covered short grass surface.

pauldry

We had a very cold January to start 2010 with some snowfall though not a lot in Sligo town itself more in Tubbercurry and Ballymote.
, then February and much of March were very frosty and all the way up to June the rainfall figures were worryingly low (there was talk of a hosepipe ban around the end of June in some parts of Co Clare and in Sligo the grass was brown)

Then in a torrent we saw widespread thunderstorms in the West and Northwest in July with nearly 200mm of rainfall for that month alone (So far there is 172mm from November 1 to Jan 2nd so that puts it in some perspective). Most of the rain in July was up to the 20th and fell in really heavy showers.

August was a non event except it was cold and misty with a persistent Northwesterly making the temperature rise to only 13 or 14c

September 6th saw 51mm of rain in Sligo Town and quite a bit more in Claremorris and other Met stations. September was wet too apart from this up here but I think the final figure was around 135mm so most of our rain was on Sept 6th like Durrow.

October doesnt really fill me with any memories except for an early Winter frost on Oct 25th and this was in the East of the country. It was very sunny and quite dry though.

November was just a bland old month with the temperature dropping slowly as the month went on. I think the start of the month saw 17c reached and 16.4c in Sligo but it quickly fell and by the end the frost ice and snow were here. Sligo had its real cold start on November 28th.

December was dominated by cold frost ice and snow with incredible snowfalls in the East and longtime lying snow here in Sligo where the total for the month for the county was around 12cm. Some areas had more than this and some less , Sligo had about 8cm.

Then December ended with a mild feel and 11c was reached by the end of the month.

So for Sligo Id say it was a dry dry cold cold quite sunny not windy year apart from that day in November was it 11th when we got 58knots and a few branches.

BEASTERLY

Danno wrote: »

IIRC Snowcover is only regarded above 50% covered short grass surface.

That would make it 30 days at least so, still impressive i think.

Danno

Impressive indeed Beasterly, I may look up how many days snow-cover we had here tomorrow.

pauldry

Here is just some data for the Big Freeze that I was given from Castlebar Co Mayo by anon:)

We'll start on November 26th 2010

There was a heavy fall of snow on this day with 2 to 3" of lying snow and allied to the frost this lasted from November 26th - December 7th. Now after this there was a slight thaw inspite of temperatures remaining low.

The week from December 8th to December 15th saw no further snowfall in Castlebar.

Then it started snowing again on Thursday 16th December and into Friday 17th with more lying snow and very hard frost as temperatures dipped to near minus 8 or 9c.

Further very hard frost on Saturday December 18th and Sunday December 19th led people to believe that the snow was over but on December 20th, night of, there was another 2 inches of snow.

On December 22nd morning the temperature was minus 15c in Castlebar. December 23rd - 25th saw temperatures of minus 14c by night and minus 3c by day.

On Christmas day the temperature rose to freezing point but dipped to minus 12c that night before the night of Stephens saw to rapid rise of temperatures up to 8c.

Amazing Spell that surely surely will be hard beat.

thetonynator

No weather station, but heres my observation summary:

Several days of frost prior to weekend of 27th of November. Woke up on 27th to approx 2cm of snow. Later that morning, about 4 more cm's of snow fell. Temps became very cold over the following days, dropping to -16 at night and not rising above 0 during the day. Heavy snow fell on the 30th of November and 1st december, total depths reached almost 8 inches. Then there was no snow for several days until the 7th of december when we missed out on the several inches just a few miles north but got about 1-2cm.

Thaw kicked in on the 10th and all snow was gone bar sheltered ditches etc by the 13th. Temps never got above 5 degrees except on the 17th prior to the cold front when they rose to nearly 9 degrees. On the 18th there was approx 0.5cm of fresh snow lying, which melted that day. There was another <1cm that night (18th-19th) which remained in place until the 26th. Temps became extremely cold (-17) and did not rise above 0 for 8 days. This culminated in the rivers nore and barrow freezing over from bank to bank on the morning of the 25th.

BEASTERLY

Danno wrote: »

Impressive indeed Beasterly, I may look up how many days snow-cover we had here tomorrow.

I remember the sat images showing the thaw in mid december the only places with snow was the wicklow mts, west wicklow and an arm of snow stretching south into wexford.

This sat image shows it nicely: It was taken well into the first thaw.


I have no idea why that arm of snow lasted so long in Wexford when eventually all surrounding areas were green. I remember looking at mt. leinster which only had 40% snow left up to 800m while we still had 100% coverage here. I cant for the life of me think why this was, any ideas?

Pangea

I only got my Temperature gauge on Decemeber 1st but heres my stats anyways.
Coldest Temperature recorded was -11.3 was on 24th December morning.
Warmest Temperature was 10.1c on 30th Decemeber.