FI Charts ( T120+ onwards) Winter 2022/2023 **READ MOD NOTE IN FIRST POST**

Sounds about right to me. All I can say is, that I should have been born in the US. I love hot sauce and proper weather.

The MJO event in November which led to our recent cold spell gives a good idea of the lag time involved.Unfortunately this event may not be quite as good, but hopefully it will lead to blocking in the right place. Then you will see the AO go negative again. The wording of the UK Met Office updates gives me some confidence that we will see another cold spell during January. In the event we don't get a block towards the second week of January, if we manage to get a resurgent jet running on a North West to South East tilt, we could, with all the very cold air locked up to the north, still tap into some potent polar maritime airflows at times during January. It won't lead to a deep freeze or copious amounts of snow, but decent accumulations are possible in places , however brief in this scenario.

RTÉ have an archived broadcast from it here: https://www.rte.ie/archives/2021/0118/1190407-big-freeze-set-to-continue/.

The only snow measurement I have from the event is 10cm depth at Dublin Airport. Naas got down to -13C. So a very good wintry event really, if not quite on par with what southeast England had.

I've shared this photo before from the New Howth Photos FB group of a snow covered Howth on 10th February 1991. Even Ireland's Eye and Lambay Island out at sea got a very decent covering.

On average, there a two hyper cyclonic periods in an average Irish winter. One is around this time that runs into early January, and the next is around the upper mid period of February.

Last storm I remember around Christmas time was about 7 years ago but I think it was standard enough.

Late 90s produced some big ones for us and Europe. 24/12/1997 highest gust 162km/h Valentia. 26/12/1998 - 178km/h Malin head.

Europe 25-27th/12/1999 Storm Lothar killed 110. 88 of those in France.

Day after Storm Martin 26-28th/12/1999 killed a further 30 across Europe.

While no great cold on offer on the charts, there is no great warmth either over the next couple of weeks.

Wet sunshine and the odd shower blowing in off the Atlantic seems to be the general theme for the foreseeable. Don't have the stats but 2022 has to go down as being one of the sunniest years on record.

What I don't like about the upcoming pattern is that while not deeply cold, it still will be consistently chilly, and that sort of wet chill that gets into the house and stays. In terms of snow, its cold, but not cold enough, but in terms of hugely exploitative heating and electricity prices go, it is still going to bite. What we are being offered on the charts is the very worst of all worlds.

I still expect plenty of cold this winter despite some forecasts..milder possibly stormy weather in between like next week followed by freezes..

Hopefully minimal impact on us. Don’t want storms over Christmas.

It does doesn't it. The actual run suggests temperatures of 2 or 3c Christmas night with some sleet possible inland. Mountains in the North will be white and there may be some night snow in some rural spots. With marginal temperatures the snow chances needs a light wind. It presently doesn't look too strong on the night of the 25th away from North Ulster but if that gale moves south it quashes the chances of snow.

Looks interesting for mid-January with blocking as the main theme (1st chart), it looks like it called the blocking as well for the cold spell in early Dec (2nd chart)

I agree, snow is good at anytime, but a freeze in the heart of winter is better if you like to see records challenged. The ideal scenario would be several days with extensive snow fields under a cold surface high before the sun starts to get stronger. As good as the cold was in late February 2018, even with the freezing temperatures snow still melted during the day.