Northerly winds

Discodog

Another lovely day but the wind is still cold. It feels like we have had cold N, NW, NE & E winds for a long time. A lot of people are talking about it. Is it unusual ?

highdef

I've spent the afternoon in Tarmonbarry (very close to Mount Dillon) and it's beautiful and quite warm, about 21° at the moment. Lots of warm sunshine too

InAtFullBack

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058354164/northerly-winds

A wind from the N, NW or NE at our latitudes will always bring cool-feeling conditions at any time of the year owing to the fact that it will generally be a less humid airmass, and secondly the air will have travelled over the quite cool waters of the north Atlantic to reach us.

Once you pass south of ~40N the cooling effect begins to lose it's effect, and especially where there is a landmass upwind. For instance, Madrid would get northeast winds as much as we get southwesterlies - however, follow the track from Madrid, northeastwards. There's alot of land going back from there and much of that is fairly dry land too.

This allows the air to remain very dry overall, and despite temperatures rallying well into the mid-30s during the summer, it's a totally different 'feel' of heat and surprisingly more bearable! In Madrid 32°C feels more like a 23°C-24°C in Ireland owing to the total lack of humidity over there.

While we had ~19°C in fairly unbroken sunshine in Ireland today, to a resident of Madrid today would have been very comparable to what they'd get in mid-April. In addition, dry lands in sunshine will heat up the lower portion of the atmosphere (air closest to the ground level) much easier than damp and vegetation intensive surfaces.

For instance, in 1887 when Ireland's hottest ever temperature of 33.3°C was recorded in Kilkenny, it-coincided with one of the driest ever years recorded in Ireland (if not the driest, I just can't recall right now). Couple that with the general area of Kilkenny and nearby areas being noted for their quite sandy soils which will dry out very quickly.

keryl

From memory, for the past 4 years we have had persistent north winds lasting into June and into July (2022 and 2024).

Does anyone know if this is a fairly new thing or been with us for decades? It seems very unusual to have cooler winds right into June and July.