Winter 2023/24 - General Discussion

Was 11c around 8 am here, now at 8c

Miserable here in Dublin City Centre, you can feel the temperature drop may be frosty tonight, northern Ireland in a snow warning on Thursday into Friday hopefully we get a few flakes

Would anyone have any in interest in an early spring/summer thoughts thread? I often see them for winter.

lovely day in Dublin, calm before the storm

Spring doesn't start till March!

Here in the weather forum, we go with the meteorological definitions of when the seasons occur, with Spring being March to May inclusive. We avoid using the old Pagan definitions as they don't normally reflect the meteorological definitions plus if we were to use the Pagan calendar here, it would completely mess us the stats here versus those that the Irish and UK Met Office use.

I think he/she has been told that before. That combined with gleefully mentioning lack of snow in recent times on another thread = troll alert.

If this winter isn't recused by a pronounced cold spell in late February it will go down as one of the biggest let downs in recent times . At least if we had a raging polar vortex over Greenland for much of the winter we wouldn't have had our hopes raised so much.

Odds on people saying front-loaded winter next year because of La Nina and the coldest early winter potential since 2010 (completely forgetting about 2022). I bet you that's what they'll come out with. As I mentioned a few weeks ago in the model thread, I'm done with these "drivers".

It's funny I was writing off the season way in advance and that turned out to be more accurate rather than getting latched into the possibilities of all these "drivers" - especially the El Niño/easterly QBO combination which as you say is rare.

The one driver consistent all winter which I've always rated higher than any is the North Atlantic SSTs which continue to be well above average and going into this season, said about how they'll make the westerlies even milder than they normally are. What do ya know, we have had effortless mild through Dec, late Jan and now early Feb. Get used to this.

February will be the 32nd month out of the last 33 (since June 2021 inclusive) to be above the 61-90 average in Central England. Only December 2022 has been below it in that period. I don't see how February will come out anything but above average.

Almost certainly next winter will be touted as front loaded. Perhaps at the very start things will look interesting and there will be talk of a cold Xmas. Etc. Then things will quickly go downhill and by Xmas we will be dealing with a strong pv over Greenland and hp to the south lol.

I was taught the Pagan calendar of seasons in school, most probably the same as yourself. Not sure if the Pagan calendar of seasons is still taught in school, does anyone know?

But think about it, August is often one of the warmest months of the year so why would you think of it being Autumn from a weather point of view?

Yep we were always taught that St.Brigids day was 1st day of spring.

Its one everyone will never agree on anyway.

Yes August can be warm but can also be very autumnal.

Sure the seasons are mad here anyone, ha who in their right mind would say July last year was height of summer when it rained for something like 28 out of 31 days!

I have seen daffodils in bloom in Galway too. The snowdrops are lovely too.

The first daffodil I seen in bloom was on 14th Jan!

Now there is loads out around the place here in NCD.

Wet snow. Cold. 0C. Very dark. Utter muck.

Leitrim