Winter 2011/2012

HellFireClub

NIALL D wrote: »

hopefully , its looking good , that this october an october 2010 were fairly similar...
now we jus need mt on our side to the deliver the good news that there will be at least a few decent snowfall events this winter... (hopefully at least a month of lying snow :eek::))

i think we will defo get a decent snowy winter !!!

The trouble is that all this "I've a feeling we are going to get loads of snow", isn't based on anything!

This October feels a lot milder than last October, I'd love loads of snow but I can't see us getting any until mid November onwards, if we get any at all, it isn't going to happen in October I reckon, it's too mild at the moment anyway.

bb1234567

HellFireClub wrote: »

The trouble is that all this "I've a feeling we are going to get loads of snow", isn't based on anything!

This October feels a lot milder than last October, I'd love loads of snow but I can't see us getting any until mid November onwards, if we get any at all, it isn't going to happen in October I reckon, it's too mild at the moment anyway.

im fairly sure nobodys genuinely expecting snow this october, or they? obviously nobody could possibly expect heavy lying snow in lowlands of ireland in october. i think weve established that by now and that mid november is the earliest we could realistically hope for . oh and this october isnt milder than last years(though i think it feels milder too) but its not i think someone said the temps were really similar this years october and lasts.

andre2010

I think Scotland is the only place that will see any significant snow in October, i seriously doubt Ireland will see any snow this early, but hopefully something towards the end of november like last year.

I wont believe snow is coming until the temp here starts dropping. I mean we are still hitting temps we were getting during our so called "summer".

fizzycyst

bb1234567 wrote: »

im fairly sure nobodys genuinely expecting snow this october, or they? obviously nobody could possibly expect heavy lying snow in lowlands of ireland in october. i think weve established that by now and that mid november is the earliest we could realistically hope for . oh and this october isnt milder than last years(though i think it feels milder too) but its not i think someone said the temps were really similar this years october and lasts.

Thing is bb, until last year snow in November was also unheard of, so just because we got snow last November, that doesn't mean it's a given this year. We can hope, but that's about it. I think we were very lucky last year (depending on who you're talking to!), but really I think November snow (never mind October) will be the exception rather than the norm.

only one

Hhhmmmm

Snowing heavily in Cork at the moment!

Speak Now

fizzycyst wrote: »

Thing is bb, until last year snow in November was also unheard of, so just because we got snow last November, that doesn't mean it's a given this year. We can hope, but that's about it. I think we were very lucky last year (depending on who you're talking to!), but really I think November snow (never mind October) will be the exception rather than the norm.

Actually up to last year i cant even remember ever getting snow before Christmas at all! It was always January/February events.

Speak Now

only one wrote: »

Hhhmmmm

Snowing heavily in Cork at the moment!

Aye the white stuff that doesn't melt at 18c.

fizzycyst

Jerry Seinfeld wrote: »

Actually up to last year i cant even remember ever getting snow before Christmas at all! It was always January/February events.

Yeah me too, and I don't have any memory of such a prolonged cold spell at all.

arctictree

Lying snow was recorded at my location in October 2003 and October 2008.

For the record...

Speak Now

fizzycyst wrote: »

Yeah me too, and I don't have any memory of such a prolonged cold spell at all.

I remember a very cold easterly some February back in the 80's (maybe 86). It was a very dry month :mad:

fizzycyst

Jerry Seinfeld wrote: »

I remember a very cold easterly some February back in the 80's (maybe 86). It was a very dry month :mad:

I was only a tot in the 80's so my memory is of cold and snow sometimes, but for how long and how much I couldn't be sure.

bb1234567

fizzycyst wrote: »

Thing is bb, until last year snow in November was also unheard of, so just because we got snow last November, that doesn't mean it's a given this year. We can hope, but that's about it. I think we were very lucky last year (depending on who you're talking to!), but really I think November snow (never mind October) will be the exception rather than the norm.

ye i agree, even if we didnt see snow by end of november i wouldnt write the winter off like i bet dozens of posters will!!! i'd still be confident well still get a very cold winter even if not started by start of december. 1963 or was it 1947 only started in mid jan after all!

Rigador

Just reading back over MT's forecasts last year and it was well into late October before there was even a sniff of a prediction of wintery weather - so I'm holding out until later this month/early November before I dampen my snow spirit! :P

Speak Now

fizzycyst wrote: »

I was only a tot in the 80's so my memory is of cold and snow sometimes, but for how long and how much I couldn't be sure.

January 87 was a good easterly that delivered.

Speak Now

fizzycyst wrote: »

I was only a tot in the 80's so my memory is of cold and snow sometimes, but for how long and how much I couldn't be sure.

Very dry if i recall




This delivered

Speak Now

This was the first pre January snow i saw in Waterford (New years eve :pac:)




So i wont be disheartened if there's no cold snap pre Christmas.

RuailleBuaille

Does anyone know if the postman from Donegal has made a prediction yet?

only one

Net Weather's winter forecast is ment to be out today aswell

Musicman2000

only one wrote: »

Net Weather's winter forecast is ment to be out today aswell

Here it is their full winter forecast is not out until next month, Nov and Dec look good for cold, not really for Jan, a re run of last year?

http://www.netweather.tv/index.cgi?action=longrange;sess=

Blizzard 2010

Looks like La Nina is going to gather strength over the winter months' Will be interesting to see how things pan out. (NOAA update October 2011)

Kippure

UK Long Range Weather Forecast - Autumn & Winter 2011
Update from James Madden and how he goes about basing his forecasts on.

http://www.exactaweather.com/UK_Long_Range_Forecast.html

SilverSparkle

I was driving into Kilkenny today at about 6 and noticed white bits in the air... Straight away I thought that is not snow, it cant be!!

Then I was driving home out of Kilkenny at 11pm and saw it again! You know in winter when it is snowing and you are driving at night time and you can see it in your head lights? It was like that!!! They were very fine white particles.

But it was quite mild out... Can't be what it looks like can it?

I have tried to think of other explanations but I can't come up with any!

NIALL D

SilverSparkle wrote: »

I was driving into Kilkenny today at about 6 and noticed white bits in the air... Straight away I thought that is not snow, it cant be!!

Then I was driving home out of Kilkenny at 11pm and saw it again! You know in winter when it is snowing and you are driving at night time and you can see it in your head lights? It was like that!!! They were very fine white particles.

But it was quite mild out... Can't be what it looks like can it?

I have tried to think of other explanations but I can't come up with any!

lol i know exactly what ya mean .. its mots and flies and the likes ...;)

SilverSparkle

NIALL D wrote: »

lol i know exactly what ya mean .. its mots and flies and the likes ...;)

It definitely didn't look like flies... I can only explain that it looked like snow or sleat... It was very fine and white.. But I really don't think it was flies! At first I thought maybe particles from a fire but when we saw it again at 11 that thought went out the window...

Ah well... I will never know what it was!

NIALL D

cant be anything else really ?
i know though i seen it myself this evening like , it was dark and it was about 14 degrees at 7-8 o clock.. wasnt snow obviously but its just in different parts of the road you see it.. i bet everyone will say mots too , no other explaination ?????

M.T. Cranium

Will be posting my winter forecast around 1030 or 1100 today, in a separate thread so this one doesn't get too unbalanced.

Returning to last year, that was a highly unusual winter by all historical standards. My data base is from the UK (CET) which extends much further back than anything numerical I could acquire for Ireland, but forum members, notably Fionagus, have sent me a tremendous amount of historical records that are generally in more anecdotal form for Ireland prior to 1850 especially. You seldom see any real conflict between UK and Ireland historical data but the details are sometimes quite different.

But my point about last winter is that you just can't find examples of winters that had 90% of their significant cold and snow before New Years. You can find many examples almost the other way around. Severe cold has affected perhaps 10% of all Decembers in the long CET record, but more like 20% of Januaries and 15% of Februaries. And in most cases, you need severe cold to get into significant snow events, although Feb 1986 (mentioned earlier in this thread) was an exception generally, a dry cold. These recent winters have probably done better for cold than snow and I would have to say that a really heavy snowfall for Ireland is rather overdue now in terms of random frequency. By that I am talking about the sort of snowstorm that would spread out beyond just the Dublin-Wicklow regional sea effect snow.

Other winters that had a severe December then went on to produce at least some further severe cold and snow in most cases, perhaps December was still the main event but for example, after December 1890 (the only one colder than last year in 352 years of CET records) Jan-Feb 1891 had some very cold spells alternating with mild. The more recent very cold Dec 1981 had a further 2-3 weeks of severe winter conditions into January 82 and the epic snowfalls near the end of that.

It is very difficult for any forecasting method to hit directly on a pattern that has never happened before, depending on how much analogues are used and not numerical modelling.

Another random thought is that patterns are more likely to be successfully predicted than events. Imagine the complexity of modelling a repeat of a historical storm event like the Big Wind of 1839 or the Dafoe storm of 1703. That "Big Wind" storm seemed to fall in the middle of a rather bland large-scale pattern too, the winter temperatures are not remarkable in either direction. We have less info on the setup for the Dafoe storm except that the CET values before and after tend to be near normal rather than cold or mild. I have research indices that can give predictions of storm track, direction and to some extent intensity, but even if those were working at full accuracy (not the case yet) I'm not too confident that a major intense storm could be accurately "modelled" that far in advance. They do tend to occur when these index values are relatively high, but that happens once or twice every winter season.

The same goes for major snowfall events. Last winter, there was some success involved in timing snow for overlapping severe cold and high energy peaks, which is logically where you would look for them. Have a look at the winter forecast later and find out when these overlaps are predicted, and that could be when snow will return this winter.

I am not expecting much lying snow later this month but it may get cold enough for some to fall on higher slopes and briefly in the shade lower down. In 352 cases, the lowest October daily mean temperature in central England was 0.7 degrees and that was at the end of Oct 1836. It would not likely get colder at any of Ireland's regular reporting stations than in the CET zone, so I think we could reasonably conclude that a daytime reading of 4 or 5 C is about the limit for October. That's barely cold enough for snow to fall but if it did, then it might last in the shade for a day or two. I once saw snow falling at 45 deg N in Ontario on 30 September and that lasted through all of the next day, and caused the daytime "high" to be suppressed to about 5 C when 10 C was probably the previous record. Snow has the ability to change mean temperatures by 5-8 C deg especially in transitional seasons. That's probably why last December set so many records, there was enough snow in eastern Ireland to leave a big "footprint" in the temperature data.

momstaxi

I read in a recent newspaper article, that the earth has entered a mini ice age due to dramatic changes in solar activities. And we could be in this cycle for a few decades.

Seemingly, the last time we had this type of weather was in the 1700's where the Thames river in London froze over bank to bank...

Can anyone enlighten me? The current weather is messing my head up!

Stacey.

It well feels like winter tonight, it's freezing.

touts

SilverSparkle wrote: »

I was driving into Kilkenny today at about 6 and noticed white bits in the air... Straight away I thought that is not snow, it cant be!!

Then I was driving home out of Kilkenny at 11pm and saw it again! You know in winter when it is snowing and you are driving at night time and you can see it in your head lights? It was like that!!! They were very fine white particles.

But it was quite mild out... Can't be what it looks like can it?

I have tried to think of other explanations but I can't come up with any!

Were you anywhere near the **** ***** * **** pharmacutical plant?

Strangegravy

momstaxi wrote: »

I read in a recent newspaper article, that the earth has entered a mini ice age due to dramatic changes in solar activities. And we could be in this cycle for a few decades.

Seemingly, the last time we had this type of weather was in the 1700's where the Thames river in London froze over bank to bank...

Can anyone enlighten me? The current weather is messing my head up!

Very long but detailed thread on it here, should give you more of an insight into why people are thinking that way...

http://touch.boards.ie/thread/2055544236?page=27#post_74860647