Winter 2018/2019 - General Discussion

A nice morning here in Castlebar, little or no wind and good vis with some nice blue skies to the north west. Id say its lovely up towards Sligo/Donegal

In case anyone would like to record this so they don't miss, there's a documentary on Ireland's 2018 weather chaos on Virgin Media One at 10 p.m. tomorrow.

https://twitter.com/deric_tv/status/1076197232804839424

Despise this weather with a passion. It's been like this for much if the time since the start of Nov. Doesn't exactly put me in a festive mood. I'm hopeful though we will see a change and that Jan and feb will be a lot more interesting thanks to the ssw if luck is on our side.

Billcarson wrote: »

Despise this weather with a passion. It's been like this for much if the time since the start of Nov. Doesn't exactly put me in a festive mood. I'm hopeful though we will see a change and that Jan and feb will be a lot more interesting thanks to the ssw if luck is on our side.

:D:D:D

typhoony wrote: »

Anyone here old enough to remember the Bartlett winters of the 90's and early 00's then the charts will have a familiar look.

Yes, a familiar look as you say.
I can already see the pictures on the news of snowfalls in Athens and north Africa!

I found this chart after I posted earlier, I would expect this to be the pattern this winter.

Oscar Bravo wrote: »

A nice morning here in Castlebar, little or no wind and good vis with some nice blue skies to the north west. Id say its lovely up towards Sligo/Donegal

Damp and misty here in Donegal so wouldn't go as far as lovely but definitely an improvement on the past while, flat calm and patches of blue in the sky

The SSW has just begun over Siberia. It will then start to push over the north pole into Greenland.

I would start to expect the Models to respond in FI.

Here is the 8th of January from 06zz run this morning.



The Minus 10 isotherm just of the East English coast.


The change in the models over the next week to 10 days will be like a light switch IMO.


Its going to get Emotional......:p:p

Spectacular golden moonrise out there at the moment, my phone camera is rubbish in the dark so can't get a decent pic but one of the nicest I've seen

M.T. mentioned the following over on Netweather:

One example of how a high to the south of the UK can rebuild north to set up a cold spell would be Jan 1-7, 1881, followed by several weeks of epic cold and snow. (check maps on wetterzentrale archives, select 20th century NOAA and input dates). The high eventually got absorbed into a Greenland high and the flow became increasingly northeast over the period. In this low-energy environment, with a southerly flow into Greenland, this seems like a possible outcome and it might be a few days before models catch on to it.

Funny how I mentioned January 1881 only yesterday when comparing the latest CFSv2 for January 2019.

https://twitter.com/SnowbieWx/status/1076533185905864704

January 1881 was a very snowy and severely cold month for those who wonder. It recorded Ireland's all-time lowest temperature of -19.1c at Markree Castle. Here's a chart from the month.



This is obviously just for fun. Let's get the SSW done and over with before looking ahead to prospects on the conditions during mid-January which is the *minimum* likely time for possible tropospheric impacts. Wait and see. We do not even know for sure if the impacts will propagate into the troposphere. Until then, something just doesn't sit right with me in this being the "big one" for cold.... I don't know why I feel that.

I thought this transition would be underway around now, with a high energy peak for 21-22 Dec. What's actually happening is less energetic but the trend is in a similar direction. Anything I've actually posted about cold features January, for example you can check my forecast in the "coldest minimum" thread (a lot of posters agreed with the timing on that, 5-15 Jan gets about half the votes in total).

Given that we are going into a prolonged period where high pressure is going to be dominant, I would take the mild forecasts with the caveat that some places, especially inland southeast, could fail to respond to weak mixing and could stay rather cold some of the days. We shall see on that one, I do expect the west to get quite mild until this pattern breaks down totally.

Sorry not to give a mention, sryanbruen, about 1881, it was something I noticed independently as I hadn't been in this thread for a while.

It does give one hope that a wintry outcome is possible even without big highs showing up from northern Russia into Scandinavia because that was never part of the scenario in 1881 and the outcome was perfect in terms of snow and cold (southern England buried under huge snowfalls from the Channel for example).

To the lay person the charts are dreadful at the moment for anyone looking for significant cold.

Also I note the SSW doesn’t really follow through and the warming doesn’t appear in a position that would aid a cold outbreak in Ireland.

Let’s see how things play but I’m not hopeful

Ps.
Bah humbug

Elmer Blooker wrote: »

You can only laugh at this! - even the Sahara can manage colder weather than us.

The only consolation from that is that Ireland isn’t the only country sitting under that mildish air.

Nice mild and calm day in Dublin.
Give me this all Winter and ill be happy.