The Snow Lovers Appreciation Society Winter 2014/15 #MOD NOTE #1

Johngoose

No, over 80 million euro of the stuff confiscated recently off the Irish coast.

maquiladora

emmetlego wrote: »

Sorry, but those look streets apart to me. I've a brother who is educating me on his profession, and he works for the UK met office. So I kind of have an idea what I'm looking at.

Johngoose wrote: »

No, over 80 million euro of the stuff confiscated recently off the Irish coast.

kingshankly

Forget about the snow folks its sun cream you will need next weekend
Happy days

Rock Lesnar

The Met Eireann app on my phone at 5.45 this morning said we got a SNOW shower in meath, i know we didnt, as i started the car for the wife before she went to work and it was bloody freezing

maquiladora

Rock Lesnar wrote: »

The Met Eireann app on my phone at 5.45 this morning said we got a SNOW shower in meath, i know we didnt, as i started the car for the wife before she went to work and it was bloody freezing

It's an automatic weather station, precipitation type errors happen sometimes.

Rock Lesnar

maquiladora wrote: »

It's an automatic weather station, precipitation type errors happen sometimes.

Oh yeah, i know, im just saying it was nice to see it mentioned.

Oneiric 3

Just reading through comments a UK Weather forum regarding 'OPI', there seems to be a lot of regard for it by some of the more normally level-headed posters, with a lot of excitement going on about the latest negative OPI figures etc. This excitement may well be valid and justified, but with no one really knowing fully how this figure is obtained, or what it even represents, a very small, cynical little voice in the very far distance of my obscenely simple mind can't help but think that there might be some sort of practical joke going here by founders of this idea to wreak the heads with those that are always seeking signals of northern blocking during the winter season. Northern blocking will nearly always occur in some form or other at various stages in most winters, so nothing really revolutionary going on there, but how it may influence this small part of the world is admittedly more tricky to narrow down

Calibos

It's always safe to assume, that no matter what kind of snowmageddon is indicated by whatever model or stats for Mainland Europe and it's close neighbour the UK, that little ol Ireland is just a touch too far out into the Atlantic to see much if any of it except in exceptional circumstances. Let's not even get into the snow shadows when by a tiny stroke of meteological luck we get some -8 850's over us.

ie. no matter what you hear or where you hear it, assume it ain't happening in our neck of the woods, and you won't be disappointed, but once a decade or so you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Gonzo

the above post is so true, ive lost countless times on the amount of times over the past 30+ years that our very close neighbour gets plastered with snow, sometimes even as far west as the welsh coastline can be sub-zero and snowy, while the east coast of Ireland and further west is +10C and misty drizzle. From 1993 onwards we've had so many close calls that just fail to make it to our shores, at least 2009/2010 worked out tho! Let's hope this winter works too!

Elmer Blooker

Gonzo wrote: »

the above post is so true, ive lost countless times on the amount of times over the past 30+ years that our very close neighbour gets plastered with snow, sometimes even as far west as the welsh coastline can be sub-zero and snowy, while the east coast of Ireland and further west is +10C and misty drizzle. From 1993 onwards we've had so many close calls that just fail to make it to our shores, at least 2009/2010 worked out tho! Let's hope this winter works too!

Exactly, countless times!
I seem to remember a -18c somewhere in eastern England around this time while we were stuck in our usual 10c muck! We're closer to the Azores high than the Scandinavian high
http://www.wetterzentrale.de/archive/2012/brack/bracka20120203.gif
(I think 20c+ is a real possibility in the Dublin area by the end of the week)

JohnDaniels

My annual weather watching period over the winter months is almost upon me, yipee

emmetlego

I, like you, take a keener look at the weather charts approaching next month. But any extremes in the weather are worth monitoring.

M.T. Cranium

I am going to hazard a guess in the following week, have done 99% of the work planned on it, just going over the results. Could say one thing -- this OPI research intrigues me too, but here again, it's a prediction of another index and as Oneiric3 says above, that is not quite the same as a flat-out prediction. Also there is this factor of Ireland not getting all the cold weather that Britain sometimes gets (unless it's the winter of 2010-11, then not much difference).

If you want a sneak preview, let's just say the winter forecast will be more variable than some and without one prevailing theme. That might still make it a better winter than some. Also, I don't think we have entirely shaken off the turbo-charged Atlantic theme as large-scale factors are not entirely different from last year. But common sense would say 50% of last year's output would be in itself rather unusual.

LordNorbury

EDIT: Ah bollox the date of the article is Nov 2013!

http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/white-christmas-for-irelands-south-says-nz-forecaster-251254.html#at_pco=smlwn-1.0&at_si=543cf957d746e5ec&at_ab=per-12&at_pos=0&at_tot=1

Long-range weather guru Ken Ring is predicting a frosty Christmas for Ireland this year, with the south of the country most likely to get a festive snowfall.....


© Irish Examiner Ltd. All rights reserved

Mod note

I know this article was already posted earlier in the thread but I'm using it to remind everyone of Boards.ie policy re Copyrighted Material

"Copy and pasting a full piece of an article from a newspaper or blog etc will not be allowed. You may copy a paragraph of the piece and must provide a link to the source under what we hope will be seen as a common sense and fair use approach."

Thanks guys

HighLine

LordNorbury wrote: »

EDIT: Ah bollox the date of the article is Nov 2013!

The date could be anytime and it would still be the same tripe. And look how inaccurate it was.

Creative Juices

I have a feeling in my bones that we are going to see some decent snow this winter.
Even if we get it in the mountains I will he happy.
When will we start to see some exciting charts?

Oneiric 3

Just for fun I calculated the correlation between the mean AO index for October when negative (less than minus 0.5 & greater than minus 1.5) against the each of the 3 winter months when the AO also finished in a negative state. (period 1950 - 2013 sourced from NOAA)

Result. Very low correlation all round:



I may be mistaken but I think that the AO is just one of the indices used to make up 'October pattern Index', but obviously there are other ones included that we don't really know about yet that have a much stronger influence on the following winter weather pattern, and they must be incredibly strong to bring the correlation between the OPI and winter weather patterns up the 0.91 as claimed.

PS, the figures in the above table are more than open to correction as the 'R' function I created to calculate them, while seemingly legit on various testing, may not be entirely perfect.

M.T. Cranium

Creative Juices wrote: »

I have a feeling in my bones that we are going to see some decent know this winter.
Even if we get it in the mountains I will he happy.
When will we start to see some exciting charts?

Around 15th of November, possibly. I think the Atlantic will be fairly hard to shake before then.

LordNorbury

Creative Juices wrote: »

I have a feeling in my bones that we are going to see some decent snow this winter.
Even if we get it in the mountains I will he happy.
When will we start to see some exciting charts?

I love nothing more than heading up the Dublin Mountains and finding snow, it's just amazing to walk in it... Even if there isn't any at ground level...

odyboody

LordNorbury wrote: »

I love nothing more than heading up the Dublin Mountains and finding snow, it's just amazing to walk in it... Even if there isn't any at ground level...

How do you reach this elusive flying snow that is not a ground level.

Tom Cruises Left Nut

odyboody wrote: »

How do you reach this elusive flying snow that is not a ground level.

Sea level I think :pac:

M.T. Cranium

These are preliminary ideas for my winter forecast, will have a final and more detailed outlook around Wed 22nd.

As always, this is entirely based on my own research and while I take note of other approaches, I assume that they will be at least partly incorporated into my methodology which uses the index values of past data considered to have predictive value for this season. In other words, I would expect these other approaches to be buried in that data analysis rather than something different from my methods.

The overview would be highly variable trends that include some very cold weather at times as well as some very mild weather at other times. The most likely times for the very cold weather appear to be mid-November, early December, mid-January and late February into early March. The very mild conditions would occur between those periods, notably Christmas to New Years as well as late January into early February.

With that much variability in the forecast, timing cannot be considered overly reliable. I am just relaying to you what my raw data show, and if the train of high-amplitude ridges and troughs is even a little off in timing, the schedule could shift.

This sort of pattern is more likely to induce northerly than easterly cold spells. This may actually favour some parts of Ireland to see snowfall, notably Connacht and west Ulster as well as west Munster, but there is probably enough variability to suggest brief spells of northeast winds favouring eastern Ireland for snow.

The overall trend here is for spells of quite contrasting weather so that if snow does materialize, it would probably not persist on the ground for more than a week before melting away in milder weather.

I don't foresee long spells of stormy weather with a parade of deep lows, but there could be one or two notably stormy spells involved in this rapidly changing scenario. It appears likely to me that there could be one or two weeks during the winter with a fast westerly type of flow bringing intense windstorms with SW to W gales, and one or two outbreaks of strong northerly flow that might induce strong gusts from NW to N associated with "polar low" type circulations.

At the same time, there could also be one or two weeks of very placid weather under high pressure of Atlantic origins similar to what happened early in Jan 2012.

That's the mixture that I foresee and within that I would think there might be two, three or possibly four interesting wintry periods for Ireland with about equal chances of them falling in any of the next five months. I don't think there's much chance of a cold-dominated sort of winter like 2009-10 but I would say there's more chance of that than a mild-dominated winter such as 2006-07. The variable signal appears strong in the preferred analogue set which includes 1968-69 and a much older case, 1866-67 which established a high-water mark for variability of temperature trends.

With this much variability expected, I am more concerned that this aspect would verify than precise timing, in other words, a difficult forecast in my estimation and therefore counting on the variability to be the main "performance" criterion.

Will update this in somewhat more expanded form next week.

Scrappychimow

M.T. Cranium wrote: »

These are preliminary ideas for my winter forecast, will have a final and more detailed outlook around Wed 22nd.

As always, this is entirely based on my own research and while I take note of other approaches, I assume that they will be at least partly incorporated into my methodology which uses the index values of past data considered to have predictive value for this season. In other words, I would expect these other approaches to be buried in that data analysis rather than something different from my methods.

The overview would be highly variable trends that include some very cold weather at times as well as some very mild weather at other times. The most likely times for the very cold weather appear to be mid-November, early December, mid-January and late February into early March. The very mild conditions would occur between those periods, notably Christmas to New Years as well as late January into early February.

With that much variability in the forecast, timing cannot be considered overly reliable. I am just relaying to you what my raw data show, and if the train of high-amplitude ridges and troughs is even a little off in timing, the schedule could shift.

This sort of pattern is more likely to induce northerly than easterly cold spells. This may actually favour some parts of Ireland to see snowfall, notably Connacht and west Ulster as well as west Munster, but there is probably enough variability to suggest brief spells of northeast winds favouring eastern Ireland for snow.

The overall trend here is for spells of quite contrasting weather so that if snow does materialize, it would probably not persist on the ground for more than a week before melting away in milder weather.

I don't foresee long spells of stormy weather with a parade of deep lows, but there could be one or two notably stormy spells involved in this rapidly changing scenario. It appears likely to me that there could be one or two weeks during the winter with a fast westerly type of flow bringing intense windstorms with SW to W gales, and one or two outbreaks of strong northerly flow that might induce strong gusts from NW to N associated with "polar low" type circulations.

At the same time, there could also be one or two weeks of very placid weather under high pressure of Atlantic origins similar to what happened early in Jan 2012.

That's the mixture that I foresee and within that I would think there might be two, three or possibly four interesting wintry periods for Ireland with about equal chances of them falling in any of the next five months. I don't think there's much chance of a cold-dominated sort of winter like 2009-10 but I would say there's more chance of that than a mild-dominated winter such as 2006-07. The variable signal appears strong in the preferred analogue set which includes 1968-69 and a much older case, 1866-67 which established a high-water mark for variability of temperature trends.

With this much variability expected, I am more concerned that this aspect would verify than precise timing, in other words, a difficult forecast in my estimation and therefore counting on the variability to be the main "performance" criterion.

Will update this in somewhat more expanded form next week.

Thanks, this sounds good!

delw

Cheers MT,i hope your timing for the Christmas period is wrong,can't stand mild Christmases

icesnowfrost

Have to say MT, it's a better outlook than your forecast for last year which u got spot on. Roll on the cold snowy days

emmetlego

Indeed, and some very interesting points. Thank you MT, so I should dash to the bookmaker now and back a green Christmas?

Loughc

emmetlego wrote: »

Indeed, and some very interesting points. Thank you MT, so I should dash to the bookmaker now and back a green Christmas?

You'd want to be betting an AWFUL lot to see any return on a green Christmas. It's odds on favourite every year there won't be snow at Christmas.

maquiladora

For what it's worth the OPI is looking very negative at the moment. It will certainly be interesting if it ends up like that at the end of the month (one way or the other). Should still be treated as just a bit of fun though I think.

http://app.til.it/opi/

icesnowfrost

maquiladora wrote: »

For what it's worth the OPI is looking very negative at the moment. It will certainly be interesting if it ends up like that at the end of the month (one way or the other). Should still be treated as just a bit of fun though I think.

http://app.til.it/opi/

Hi. We're is the usual suspects. Normally by now there is a winter thread for the hard cores lol

maquiladora

icesnowfrost wrote: »

Hi. We're is the usual suspects. Normally by now there is a winter thread for the hard cores lol

You're in it!