Interesting Statistic - Lack of Wind and Gale Force Gusts

Looked through the wind gust data for Valentia since 1990 and found the following periods of 80 days+ that lacked gale force gusts. 2003 had a period of as much as 121 consecutive "gale force-less" days at Valentia whilst the longest period in 2021 was 83 consecutive days. Interesting how I couldn't find a period from the 1990s and 1 in the 2000s yet 5 in the 2010s onwards. Maybe indicative of the reduction in wind since?

Yes its weird. Normally we would have had heaps of Atlantic Storms by now. I am sure the usual few will hit around mid-winter and with chalara really hitting Ash trees this year, a good few of those are going to come down in the near future too.

I think there's a huge amount of leaves still on trees compared to previous years.

And I’m delighted with that.

Is there a meteorological reason, a blocking high or something ?

High pressure laying close to or over Ireland over the last few months has basically kept the more usual Atlantic lows (which bring our usual breezy conditions) more steered away to our north and west.

Cork Apt monthly windspeed anomaly (from 81-10 average) for each complete month of this year.

Says it all.

data: Met Eireann.

My apologies I hadnt seen the earlier one

Can only imagine the fisheries welcome such calmness.

Consistency with wind generation will always be an issue.

In the 2021 annual summary, Met É mentioned "Four stations had their lowest yearly mean wind on record (record length ranging from between 9 and 16 years). Thirteen stations had their lowest yearly mean wind since 2010 and Dublin Airport, Co Dublin had its lowest yearly mean wind since 1959.".

So without looking at the data, I am having to believe that 2021 was indeed the most calm year nationally speaking since 2010. Both years known for their blocked setups - 2010 tended to be more from -NAO which apart from April and May (perhaps January too) wasn't really as much of a feature in 2021 and there was a prolonged warm period from June to December.

Mean sea level pressure anomalies for the two years are in line with what I theorised to some extent. Both years tended to have higher pressure blocking to the northwest but clearly the -NAO signal was stronger in 2010 with a deeper Euro trough which was the result of the exceptionally cold and blocked winters at either end of the year.