FI Charts (T120+ onwards) Winter 2018 **READ MOD NOTE IN FIRST POST**

It might be a case of patience. it's encouraging to see the ECM is still sustaining the cold. It's stating the obvious, but it's what happens to the high after day 8. The key as we all know is for more energy to go under the block than over it. Even in the worst case scenario we should have a couple of cold and crisp days, much better than the dank and dreary days of a few weeks ago

Easterly Beasterly wrote: »

Hey GS, I was having a look at some of the Archive charts of Feb 1991, it's the one cold spell that sticks in my mind. Was that a straight Easterly via a Scandinavian High or Northeasterly ?

Didnt that start as rain and then turned to snow and kept snowing

The GFS in its last run had a snowy break down next week. I think we can safely say at this stage we are going to get at least a few cold and dry days out of this.
Which will be welcome relief to many after the all the flooding and wind lately.
There might be some snow around the east on Saturday night and into Sunday, but with pressure high it might be a more sleety mix lower down. I could be wrong though.

The westerlies start to dominate again by day 10.



The upper airs aren't particularly warm though.

derekon wrote: »

I fully expect the whole thing to go belly up , already the cold is being watered down with a wee tweak here and there, ref comments on Netweather

Been here too many times with respect to possible snow in Ireland - whatever can go wrong will go wrong due to the VERY marginal nature of snow in Ireland

Expect downgrades later today

D

As predicted, the upcoming cold spell with a possibility of snow has been watered down to a few cool days with night frosts. No chance of snow in the coming week for Ireland.

Key lessons for newbies:

1. Trust no charts beyond 4-5 days
2. Look at the wider picture, no cold to tap into in Europe at the moment
3. You really need to see the three main models buy into cold. GFS just wasn't buying it.

If you follow the above in terms of snow hunting in Ireland you won't go far wrong!

D

George Sunsnow wrote: »

The UKMO 12Z. 120 High sinking towards Russia
UKMO 144 southerlies and southwesterlies

I won’t sicken ye with the charts but it has the US energy barreling towards us

Once that’s gone the default route so soon as opposed to what we thought (or I thought) we were looking forward to in the output just a few days ago which had several days of the rare undercut route
Once it does that, it’s curtains
Couple of weeks of this I fear is odds on being our climate,and another heart of winter wasted

What are you saying here are we going to get more storms or what.

George Sunsnow wrote: »

The UKMO 12Z. 120 High sinking towards Russia
UKMO 144 southerlies and southwesterlies

I won’t sicken ye with the charts but it has the US energy barreling towards us

Once that’s gone the default route so soon as opposed to what we thought (or I thought) we were looking forward to in the output just a few days ago which had several days of the rare undercut route
Once it does that, it’s curtains
Couple of weeks of this I fear is odds on being our climate,and another heart of winter wasted

That's a pretty well split vortex, Heights to our north and could easily develop into a very good outcome for us down the line. I agree we had taken steps back but the 12z's are an improvement going forward in my eyes. As long as the Azores High doesn't push into europe our cold options are still on the table.

Okay so we don't have the bitter snowy easterly that the ECM and GEM had been showing just yet but this is far far away from a bad NH profile if you like colder weather.

PokeHerKing wrote: »

To think some people don't blows my mind!

Well i suppose if we all thought the same life would be boring, but that said people who prefer mild and cloudy weather over crisp winter days need their heads examined:p You won't find many weather picture forums with shots of mild and dreary days!

George Sunsnow wrote: »

I hate the words downgrade or upgrade
It’s very unmetorological to describe charts that merely correct themselves as downgrades or upgrades
It’s language that started over on the UK fora


Anyway here’s tonight’s ECM 120
Just 5 days away,the short lived hp is blasted out of it and we are back to southerlies,southwesterlies and a conveyer belt of Atlantic lows

Back to Atlantic lows? Have we really had that many this season other than this week?

The block is still steady enough to ensure the Atlantic does not plough through all the way to the contininent, but there is just too much energy coming out towards Greenland to stop it from going under the block and producing a snowy nirvana for us. This is why tears are being shed tonight in Arklow:(

If that monster low over the states had taken a different track we might have had waa heading up into Greenland. That may have led to a Greenland High.

It does seem to be the case that if north america is very warm at this time of year we have a much better chance of seeing colder weather here. I recall back in December 2010 it was unusually warm in Alaska at that time. Also a friend of mine over in Alberta had very warm weather at the same time. I think there is something in this, as anytime we get noticeably cold weather, she seems to have quite warm weather by their standards

I don't get all the sudden negativity here, other than one or two ECMWF runs that showed cold eventually reaching us in over a weeks time the charts never looked interesting in the first place. Even the 'best' runs from the past couple of days showed a brief cool easterly at the weekend before high pressure built and lasted all week. There was no cold pool forecast over Europe so it took a good 8-9 days for any real cold to reach us

nagdefy wrote: »

It could be all for the best.. Let Europe cool down and the second half of January might prove better than a meek semblance of an easterly.

Can't remember the last time Ireland had a decent cold spell during the second half of a January though. Don't think I've seen much if any lying snow for example during that part of Jan since the 80s.