Cold week ahead, change is on the way ............

mumo3 · 24-03-2013 12:03am

Am I allowed to get some what excited

Gonzo · 24-03-2013 12:05am

snowing outside but not sticking yet, need bigger flakes:) nice to see the flakes dance about in the wind under the porch light tho

lucernarian · 24-03-2013 12:19am

whitebriar wrote:

You are missing my point l think.
This is not an event description or forecast even,it's a could.

For the record,I've seen lying snow survive 3 an 4 c many times in the 80's and substantially so twice as a kid in late march in the late 70's.True it depends on how much snow you have.My speculative gut thoughts here is assuming that,we would have to be verY flukey to avoid some more significant snowy feature appearing at short notice,given the window of time we are being subjected to this feed is so long.

May I suggest that you're missing a key part of my point?

The snow has to be there first for it to lie around. If typical amounts are a dusting to 2 cm by morning time, which is what I expect, then it won't be enough.

I can see what you mean by luck coming into it, but the general synoptics can tell us how likely there will be a very snowy feature in the first place. 2010 is a good example of it, the subtleties of wind direction lead to some on this forum calling for the Isle of Mordor to be nuked! But the forecasts always showed the potential for convection. I don't see the charts up to Thursday suggesting some places in line for a dumping with others remaining dry. It's like what happened two weeks ago. More areas will see a Tramore-style snowfall, but that in itself wasn't a patch on 2010. I don't see much use in building expectations up right now, I suppose.

Petrol_Head · 24-03-2013 12:52am

Anyone lamp post watching tonight?

mumo3 · 24-03-2013 12:53am

Petrol_Head wrote: »

Anyone lamp post watching tonight?

HELL YE
fingers crossed

Gonzo · 24-03-2013 1:19am

lampposting for past hour, snowing constantly but way too light to make any sort of impact, melt's instantly. This is the band that caused 20 foot drifts in the UK, it's weakened quite a bit on it's way back to Ireland:)

hollster2 · 24-03-2013 1:25am

lamp post watchin cant stop lookin out my bedroom window lol oh not gonna be able to sleep lol

fr wishy washy · 24-03-2013 1:45am

Good luck with the lampost watching:eek:

John.Icy · 24-03-2013 2:34am

GFS 18z.....snowstorm into next weekend from Thurs/Fri....much of country included this time, begins turning to rain in far South West, before slowly turning to rain for much of the country many hours after starting, but that's as a result of the undercut getting oddly messy, if it's going to happen, it would be cleaner IMO with even more snow. Either way on this run, the rain eventually turns back to snow as an undercut finally completes.

Trend is your friend. 0z suite will be fun. Could be a repeat of the days just gone by, but with even more areas involved.

Also, ahem.... /ramp.

Sensual Cucumber · 24-03-2013 3:42am

Snowstorm please! 100 miles from here in Wales have 10ft drifts, so close so frustrating:( ...I really need to move out of here its cold, wet and still windy enough to blow a large farmer off an average sized sheep.

irish1967 · 24-03-2013 4:39am

Came out if work in Donegal Town at 3.30am to a SNOW SHOWER !! Where the heck did that come from !! First all weekend. Temp 1.2c DP -0.9

TouchingVirus · 24-03-2013 5:10am

So it's late/early in the morning and I've a curiosity for a layman's summary on why it's so damn cold; would anyone care to oblige?

DOCARCH · 24-03-2013 8:09am

There's a band of light precipitation extending and moving across the middle of England and into Wales at the moment...wonder will it make to the Irish Sea?

Brass monkeys here this morning with a stiff east wind. 1.3c DP -1.3c atm.

The wind would cut you in two! Hard to believe we are a week away from April.

whitebriar · 24-03-2013 8:37am

Quite a change in the big two models this morning ( Ukmo and ecm )towards milder with wind and very heavy rain and more flooding by Thursday.
Gfs also.
If that happened as per the overnight runs,transitional blizzards for Ulster followed by a rapid thaw there.
It would obviously flip my thoughts from last night on their head,were further runs to maintain this as a new theme because the window of opportunity would have significantly shortened.
Lets see.

derekon · 24-03-2013 10:01am

whitebriar wrote: »

Quite a change in the big two models this morning ( Ukmo and ecm )towards milder with wind and very heavy rain and more flooding by Thursday.
Gfs also.
If that happened as per the overnight runs,transitional blizzards for Ulster followed by a rapid thaw there.
It would obviously flip my thoughts from last night on their head,were further runs to maintain this as a new theme because the window of opportunity would have significantly shortened.
Lets see.

Hi Whitebriar, has the ECM not updated? It still appears to be on yesterday's midday run rather than the midnight run.

Also do you think anyone on the east coast lamp post watching over the coming days will essentially be wasting their time? Does not appear to be much precipitation in the offing and MT's update this morning would not instill confidence in terms of snow possibilities..........

D

acassells80 · 24-03-2013 10:13am

At midnight Met Eireann said snow for east and today now it's rain. At 6am the 3hr forecast showed precipitation over east coast at 9am and its clear. Can't forecast anything , give up!

whitebriar · 24-03-2013 10:20am

Ecm 00z is up on wetterzentrale anyhow - No big comment on it yet untill we all see the next few.

As for precip during the week,I don't think it will be as windy as the 1 day wonder a forthnight ago and dewpoints wiill be higher(though still subzero)
If the wind stays East(not ne) then showers are more likely along the longest sea track into Dublin.South of there it's a lottery but of course this is late march,the shower formation might not stop at the sea.
I've no doubt that the stuff falling will be snow,graupel or hail though.

derekon · 24-03-2013 10:27am

whitebriar wrote: »

Ecm 00z is up on wetterzentrale anyhow - No big comment on it yet untill we all see the next few.

As for precip during the week,I don't think it will be as windy as the 1 day wonder a forthnight ago and dewpoints wiill be higher(though still subzero)
If the wind stays East(not ne) then showers are more likely along the longest sea track into Dublin.South of there it's a lottery but of course this is late march,the shower formation might not stop at the sea.
I've no doubt that the stuff falling will be snow,graupel or hail though.

Cheers, you can't help but feeling though that we missed out on the "big one" on Friday. Now we are just playing for scraps.

How is it that Northern Ireland got so much snow while down south we just received non stop downpours? Was it simply due to upper temperatures and that these were slightly colder in NI?

The temp all day Friday in Dublin was only 3oC. However it might as well have been 20oC given what occurred. Such a shame for winter weather fans. :mad:

D

Rock Lesnar · 24-03-2013 10:29am

acassells80 wrote: »

At midnight Met Eireann said snow for east and today now it's rain. At 6am the 3hr forecast showed precipitation over east coast at 9am and its clear. Can't forecast anything , give up!

here we go again, bash met eireann time, They were'nt the only forecasters to predict snow over the east last night and it didnt materialise. I could be wrong but the precipitation they predicted was 0.1mm from around 6am onwards, now i'm no weather expert but i would'nt be expecting a deluge out of the measurement.

whitebriar · 24-03-2013 10:37am

NI got snow because it remained in the coldest easterly Surface feed.Uppers don't matter as much as long as the entire trip from cloud to ground is cold enough.
It was still very marginal up there,but at the snowy side of marginal mostly obviously.

To clarify,thats what I was on about last night,the longer this feed lasts,the longer snow cover in GB aids lower athmosphere cooling,the higher the likelyhood that something from the southwest would stay as snow further south(Ni style) and the higher the chances of something popping up at short notice in the continent heading this way.

This mornings runs lesson the window of opportunity for that considerably,should that theme continue.

sunbabe08 · 24-03-2013 10:44am

acassells80 wrote: »

At midnight Met Eireann said snow for east and today now it's rain. At 6am the 3hr forecast showed precipitation over east coast at 9am and its clear. Can't forecast anything , give up!

you know weather can change at any point

M.T. Cranium · 24-03-2013 11:42am

Dublin and south chances for snow will improve on Monday as the upper support deepens and wind backs a few degrees, right now these factors favour Meath for anything that might develop later today (wind is about 100 deg so Anglesey is in the way for Dublin and south, and then far enough south to increase the fetch, it isn't cold enough up top yet).

Charts look like wind direction will slowly come around to about 070-080 deg and that may be much better for Dublin, if anything can get started.

As whitebriar was saying, when you load up this many low probability events day after day, the cumulative probability is fairly good, the wayward rabbit can't keep dodging every car on the lightly travelled road sort of a proposition. As to which day and which county or location, that is almost like a lottery at this point as the meso-scale guidance is simply cold and dry. I would put a small wager on Meath inland tomorrow.

dopolahpec · 24-03-2013 11:45am

At my parents home in Meath. Lead grey skies and a bitter wind. I feel like I am somewhere east of Moscow in January, January 1983. It's bad.

Anyway. This morning's GFS? Floods next weekend far worse than the weekend just gone if it transpires.

The downside to northern blocking (apart from the obvious) is that these systems can't push through quickly. The moisture then gets dumped at the edge of the different air masses (us again).

The current weather we are experiencing is almost surreal in its grimness. I really don't know when we are going to get out of this terrible cycle of blocking and godawful cold.

Bejubby · 24-03-2013 11:48am

So theres potential for disruptive snow for south and east next weekend,hope it plays out!!

This is one odd ball spring!

rc28 · 24-03-2013 11:51am

Seriously, can anyone guess at when we might see the sun again? 5 solid days of depressing cloud is really getting to me. I can take the cold (even if it is almost April) as long as we get sunshine. An app on my phone seems to think it will be cloudy here for another 6 days :eek:

Btw, there's been some light snow grains blowing in the wind here in Meath.

lucernarian · 24-03-2013 12:02pm

M.T. Cranium wrote: »

Dublin and south chances for snow will improve on Monday as the upper support deepens and wind backs a few degrees, right now these factors favour Meath for anything that might develop later today (wind is about 100 deg so Anglesey is in the way for Dublin and south, and then far enough south to increase the fetch, it isn't cold enough up top yet).

Charts look like wind direction will slowly come around to about 070-080 deg and that may be much better for Dublin, if anything can get started.

As whitebriar was saying, when you load up this many low probability events day after day, the cumulative probability is fairly good, the wayward rabbit can't keep dodging every car on the lightly travelled road sort of a proposition. As to which day and which county or location, that is almost like a lottery at this point as the meso-scale guidance is simply cold and dry. I would put a small wager on Meath inland tomorrow.

How much, how much, that's the question. Up to 2 cm? I'd say so. Disruptive snow, I doubt it. To say it will happen *somewhere* is near enough a given. What matters is how widespread it will be. Also, we don't have different kinds of opportunities or synoptic conditions for snow. For Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, the synoptics are more-or-less carbon copies. It boils down to what lucky spot will get persistent light snow streamers.

snowlover · 24-03-2013 12:05pm

The sky looks heavy here in Meath (navan) yet there is nothing on the radar? Could it still snow/sleet if nothing is showing??

Supercell · 24-03-2013 12:05pm

rc28 wrote: »

Seriously, can anyone guess at when we might see the sun again? 5 solid days of depressing cloud is really getting to me. I can take the cold (even if it is almost April) as long as we get sunshine. An app on my phone seems to think it will be cloudy here for another 6 days :eek:

Btw, there's been some light snow grains blowing in the wind here in Meath.

Very dull on the east coast too, currently running around half normal monthly March Sunshine here :-

John.Icy · 24-03-2013 12:07pm

Well this mornings trend is certainly not my friend. Very surprising at the extent of the turnaround. Although I knew the low would chop and change till at least Wednesday. I didn't see it happening like this. Mostly in regards to the very mild air out East. We do keep coldish east winds into FI though, although as I said, cold pool gone to East, so we'd only drag in some very mild weather.

Expect changes in the Low, last weeks was chopping and changing on a large scale up until Tuesday, and on a minor scale till Wednesday. Slight changes and a better undercut will change the outlook completely for next weekend.

As for past that, maybe it just is time for that 'Spring' to come along.

Son0vagun · 24-03-2013 12:11pm

Trying to snow here in Navan, the odd flake falling. But it's not gonna snow.

Cold week ahead, change is on the way ............

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