Does Ireland have a storm season

Thud

Does ireland have a persistent storm season now? Sept to Nov/Dec in the past few years seem to see us getting constantly battered by storms, there are a few in August and January/February too but probably less concentrated.

Is there any chronological record of the named storms to hit ireland?

It probably not great for tourism to have a storm season but its possibly the reality now.

bazlers

I think we have created the season in that we now put a name to each event.

Thud

I think that's a set of storm names for the next 12 months (Sept to August I think)

skinny90

Taking a pragmatic view to windy.com wind forecast for next Sunday / Monday we could see storm Elin

sryanbruen

The idea of the whole named storms system was to increase awareness. It has done that successfully, more and more people are aware of our depressions that we get but there has also been another effect from this and that is it creates this false mindset that we've gotten more storms. Climate change is very much real, our winters have gotten wetter and average temperatures have risen on a long time-scale. However, the numbers of actual storms hasn't shown any evidence in increasing or intensity increasing. If anything, our average winter mean speeds have dropped from the 80s/90s and we've had several record-breaking calm ones this century including 2009-10, 2010-11 and 2020-21. The windiest seasons 2013-14 and 2019-20 haven't quite been able to compete with the big ones like 1989-90 from decades ago. In fact, a lot of the named storms haven't been able to compete with a lot of depressions from the second half of the 20th century when the North Atlantic was in a colder state. Although warm seas give more energy for say rainfall, thus our wetter winters, depressions require a strong thermal gradient to deepen and give extremely strong winds which warm seas on their own won't cause.

Windstorms can occur any time of year in Ireland but tend to be most frequent climatologically speaking from the second half of September 'til the end of March. This is down to initially the onset of autumn from the polar regions cooling down and with warm seas from the residue of summer helping to enhance the jet stream then the normally very cold stratosphere drives the westerly flow across the northern hemisphere for the winter season keeping our winter relatively mild with numerous depressions during the course of the season. When the stratosphere is coldest, the Christmas to New Year week is climatologically the windiest week of the year on average. As polar regions and the stratosphere warm up through the spring, the jet stream weakens leading to a reduction in the likelihood of the formation of explosive cyclogenesis. Of course every year is different and it's not quite as simple as that with local weather elsewhere sometimes giving kicks to the jet stream such as a cold outbreak into the eastern seaboard of the United States. There's also the variation of sudden stratospheric warming events (I detail how they occur in the stratosphere watch thread).

All the named storms since naming began in 2015-16 are under the Storm Centre section of Met.ie: https://www.met.ie/climate/storm-centre

The above page gives various stats about each named storm including the highest wind gust, the highest sustained wind, the highest daily rainfall total and their warranted warning level highlighted as well as the highest wave, lowest MSLP, the range of daily temperatures during the day of impact and the Met that named the storm. It's a great little resource that I don't think many know about. It was only created in 2022.

crusd

Anecdotally I always felt December to April was peak season for storms

sryanbruen

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121365868#Comment_121365868

April is a calmer month than October and November typically. It is when the stratospheric polar vortex normally goes into hibernation and the westerly flow significantly dies down. April and May are the most easterly months of the year on average. It's highly unusual for easterly winds to be stormy of course.

crusd

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121366031#Comment_121366031

Found an archive of weather warnings - 2012-2021. October to February seems like peak season. My memory on April seems to have been coloured by twice in the last few years flying during weather warnings in April

https://data.gov.ie/dataset/archived-weather-warnings