Irish Weather Statistics

Billcarson wrote: »

Think you mean Jan 2010. First half of that month was great but yet again 2 Nd half pretty unmemorable.

Early January 2009 was also very cold, but dry and not a lot of snow.

Yep, February is the coldest month on average in regards to the IMT:

1981-2010 Winter IMT averages

December: 5.6
January: 5.5
February: 5.3
Winter: 5.5

Minimum temperatures for the period January 16th-31st

2017: N/A
2016: -4.5c at Durrow, Co. Laois on the 16th
2015: -6.2c at Dunsany, Co. Meath on the 19th
2014: -2.5c at Dungarvan, Co. Waterford on the 19th
2013: -6.4c at Gurteen, Co. Tipperary on the 23rd
2012: -4.0c at Castleconnell, Co. Limerick on the 28th

**Monthly minimums here are not exact degrees as in the old Met Éireann bulletins, they rounded temperatures to the closest/highest full figure - they changed this in 2012. They also do not give location names. Exceptions to this are Januaries where minimums for the month are recorded in the period 16th-31st, then they give the figure and location in the temperature section of their bulletin. So I apologise for those years with rounded up temperatures and no location**

2011: -8.6c at Waterford on the 31st
2010: -5c on the 25th
2009: -2c on the 21st/28th
2008: -1c on the 30th
2007: -4c on the 23rd/25th
2006: -6.7c at Birr, Co. Offaly on the 30th
2005: -4.6c at Glenties, Co. Donegal on the 23rd
2004: -7.7c at Kilkenny on the 29th
2003: -3c on the 23rd/30th/31st
2002: -1c on the 18th/24th
2001: -7.0c at Derrygreenagh, Co. Offaly on the 16th
2000: -5.0c at Ardfert, Co. Kerry on the 15th
1999: -3c on the 21st/22nd
1998: -5.2c at Phoenix Park, Co. Dublin on the 20th
1997: -6c on the 21st
1996: -7.7c at Kilkenny on the 28th

Information is originally sourced from Met Éireann's monthly weather bulletins.

I'll update on more soon, so far 2011 is the coldest.

Unlike Summers ending in "8", there's far less of a coincidence for Summers ending in "9" with quite a mix of them in there.



Data is sourced from the Hadley Centre.

All this bashing at Met Éireann this Winter and these storms has got me wondering when they've actually made bad mistakes. I looked back on the previous two windstorm seasons - 2015/16 & 2016/17, I found one "storm" that was named by Met Éireann but was an absolute fail and literally nobody remembers.

This "storm" being Ewan of February 2017.



This is the description of it on Wikipedia:

Storm Ewan was named by Met Éireann four days after Doris on 25 February and impacted Ireland on 26 February 2017. Ewan failed to form a low pressure system and damage was limited in Ireland to strong winds on the south coast.

Maximum wind gust was 70mph.

January 1982 is a month that a lot of people whom were school kids at the time, have a lot of nostalgia for because of the weather that took place. Well what was special about January 1982? After all, it had an IMT of 5.2c, which comes to -0.3c below the 1981-2010 average and this is a very unremarkable mean temperature but the devil really is in the detail for what happened during this month. It was certainly THE month to be a school kid. We'll get into the excitement of this January in a short bit here.

After a very cold December which was the coldest of the 20th century, the first few days of January were mild and unsettled. It was cloudy with southwesterlies dominating the pattern over the Emerald Isle. This brought widespread rain to places, most notably on the 2nd and 3rd.

However, this mild and unsettled interlude did not last long and things were set to get absolutely bitter! Greenland and Scandinavian blocks did not disappear at all during the short mild spell. They returned to effect Ireland with an absolute vengeance of cold and snowy conditions. Cold started getting going on the 6th and widespread heavy snowfalls occurred, beginning in southern regions on the 7th and extending to most regions on the 8th. Gale force easterly winds caused severe blizzards across much of the east and midlands. Snow drifts were between 2-5 metres in parts giving off to one of the most severe blizzards to ever affect Ireland. Some of the west and northwest escaped the snow entirely because they were close to the block of high pressure. The severe cold did not really set in 'til the 9th and 10th when temperatures started to take a deep plunge. The UK had dropped down to -27.2c on January 10th, the equal lowest UK minimum temperature ever recorded - with February 1895 and December 1995. The severe cold allowed the lying snow to continue to lay on the ground for multiple days up to the 14th. A slow thaw then set in from the southwest and the rest of January became changeable but mild and unsettled making the extreme cold spell and the blizzards seem like a distant memory.

The lowest temperature seen during this spell in Ireland was -14.6c at Birr on January 12th, not as low as Lullymore's -18.8c on January 2nd 1979, just 3 years before hand.

However, people certainly did make the most of the snow! Here's a video from RTÉ archives showing everybody taking advantage of the snow by tobogganing in Phoenix Park:

http://www.rte.ie/archives/2016/0115/760459-the-big-snow/

http://www.rte.ie/archives/2017/0109/843625-freezing-weather-continues/

These were the greatest snow depths across the Met Éireann stations in Ireland showing how significant the snow was:









http://www.dailyedge.ie/ireland-big-snow-1982-1238041-Dec2013/

https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/flashback-1982-ireland-comes-to-a-standstill-during-the-big-snow-34341111.html

https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2054920482

http://www.turtlebunbury.com/history/history_irish/history_irish_big_snow.htm

Information is originally from Met Éireann.

The IMT for January 2018 was 5.2c, -0.3c below the 1981-2010 average. Northern Ireland had a large impact in the negative anomaly 'cause much of the Republic of Ireland was warmer than average.

I posted part 1 of the Winter 1946-47 article in October on this thread and I think it's a good time to post part 2 of it here.

https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=104851918&postcount=142

In part 1, I discussed December 1946 and the teasers that the Winter was foreshadowing in that month for what was going to come in February 1947. This time, we'll be going into the actual cold and snowy spell that everybody remembers this Winter for. It's going to be a very long post so please sit tight, get some popcorn and enjoy it!

Since the first part, I have calculated the IMTs for each of the Winter months in 1946-47. December 1946 had an IMT of 3.9c which is -1.7c below the 1981-2010 average. However, the 1981-2010 average is quite a warm dataset and December had quite some swings in temperature so this mean temperature isn't all that impressive as it seems at first sight - like compare it to December 2010's IMT of -0.7c.

The strong Polar Vortex at the end of December continued into January 1947 with Atlantic depressions trying to push in against the intense Scandinavian block that is really trying hard to turn the winds into the east. This is evident on the 4th January where the winds briefly go into the east - the UK gets some of the continental cold air but Ireland never really taps into it.







The Scandinavian block pushes over to Russia by the 9th January and we become stuck in an Atlantic regime with some very mild temperatures at times. The winds are mainly southerly - hard to believe what was going to happen around the latter half of the month.

On the 17th January, low pressure starts clearing away and high pressure tries to ascend from the south ending the very mild and unsettled conditions.



The high went up to Scandinavia on the 21st and then successfully brought the winds into the east whilst low pressure strikes Iberia. In these easterly winds, it became severely cold very fast with daytime temperatures barely getting above freezing by the 24th.







The easterly winds continued for the rest of January bringing in a lot of severe frost and ice along with snow showers. January's IMT ended at 2.8c in spite of all the very mild and unsettled weather it brought at the start. By the 31st January and 1st February, the Atlantic started battling against these easterly winds by a low pressure pushing into the south of Ireland. This laid for around 2-3 days straight before moving towards the English Channel by the 4th. During this time, it brought some heavy snowfall to parts, particularly the midland regions.



Easterly winds persisted again and again through February 1947 with more and more snow showers. Another low pressure system tried to push into the south of Ireland on the 8th. This low had gone to the English Channel by the 10th.



For around 12-14 days, it was just easterly winds bringing bitterly cold air to all and snow showers, especially in the eastern half of the country - as expected with easterlies.

A little low pushed up from the southwest on the 24th into the 25th and brought the greatest blizzard to ever hit Ireland - even better than the January 1982 blizzard. Let me read you a few paragraphs from Ireland's Arctic Siege of 1947: The Big Freeze of 1947 (which is a book that a Boards.ie user recommended to me and I love it!) on this blizzard.

About midday on 24 February, a cable from Russia had Dublin's "weather experts" buzzing over news that Moscow's temperature had reached 33 degrees fahrenheit (1c) by 8 a.m, with scattered rain. This created a "meteorological hubbub", which prompted some prognosticators to conclude that the warmer weather in Russia "may at least indicate that Europe's icy spell is ending." The Irish Independent blared the good news: "Hopes for a break in cold spell."

That afternoon, the Evening Herald predicted that Tuesday the 25th would be a dandy day with "fine weather... moderate winds... good bright periods." Around the country, spirits rose.

In the middle of the night of 24/25 February, the storm slammed into Ireland with meteoric impact. Under the cover of darkness, it churned across the landscape like some giant locomotive. By 3 a.m. the snow was so dense that "visibility was reduced almost to nil" accumulating inches per hour. A replica of the other blizzards - only far mightier.

Early on Tuesday morning, an ESB spokesman revealed that damage to the major trunk lines was so "very much worse" than with the previous blizzards that "conditions beggar description". In like manner, Post Office officials stated that their "entire telephone trunk line" was so badly torn asunder that "communications are in chaos". People around the country were cut off from communicating with one another and with the outside world. In the capital, emergency services - hospitals, doctors, fire brigade, ambulances, Garda stations - were unreachable. City life was brought to a halt. Legislators living in the suburbs and outside counties were stranded, with 131 of the combined Dáil and Seanad membership of 198 absent that day.

The countryside was smothered. Three to six feet of new snow atop that already embedded. In parts of the midlands, Connacht and Co. Wicklow drifts of twenty feet were common. When Christy Wynne awoke in Boyle, Co. Roscommon, everything had "disappeared under a huge blanket of snow.... There were drifts fifteen feet high. The town looked like a lost village in Siberia". The reliable Irish Times would verify at least one "50-foot drift near Glencree" and that the "hamlet of Moneystown at Roundwood has been lost in the snow".

Landscapes were wildly and weirdly transformed by the heavy snow and drifting caused by gale-force winds. A "white desert" one person called it; to another it was a "white wilderness". Unknown. Forbidding. Entire animal herds had simply vanished. Some farmers barely recognised their own strangely distorted land. In Co. Sligo, Thomas Crosby found that the freezing temperatures had "solidified the surface, and it was possible to walk over submerged trees". Scenes out of a fantasy world, or science fiction. Amidst the tortured terrain, an unknown number of people were missing and dead.

People were calling this monstrous blizzard the "Big Snow". The Dublin Evening Mail identified it as the "white enemy". In after years old-timers would remember it as the "daddy of them all".

What a blizzard that was on top of already snowed covered ground pretty much across the board. There was certainly no shortage of snow during February 1947. It was the most easterly month on record and I think it's also Ireland's snowiest month on record to this day.

The lowest Ireland temperature in February 1947 I know of is -12.2c at Mullingar, Co. Westmeath on the 23rd.

Longing wrote: »

Heavy snow showers first week of May 1997.

May 1997 was a very interesting month.

It started off with a ridge of high pressure over the country from the last few days of April bringing some very pleasant warm sunshine. Temperatures reached 23 and 24c on the 1st and 2nd May 1997.



This was quickly changed to a northerly outbreak that you've shown around the 5th onwards as a low pressure pushes in from the west and then stalls to the east of Britain forcing the winds to become northerlies.

The -5c isotherm hit the northwest of Ireland on May 5th.



Met Éireann description for May 6th:

Cold day with sunny spells and wintry showers, some of hail or snow and with isolated thunderstorms. Moderate north to northwesterly winds, but fresh to strong near coasts in Ulster and north Connaught, were blustery in showers. Frosty early and some ground frost late in the day.

Rainfall: trace to 6mm
Temperature: max. 7c to 11c, min. -1c to 3c; ground temperatures down to -3c in the midlands
Sunshine: 7 to 11 hours

Hard to believe that was a day in May. It was the only day to have snow according to Met Éireann in May 1997. Fethard, Co. Tipperary got down to -1.6c on the 7th.



This cool showery weather ended on the 13th and conditions had began to improve with 22c being recorded on the 16th in an easterly flow.



It was unsettled again for a while from the 18th to the 23rd with some heavy rain on the 18th including a daily rainfall of 29mm at Mullingar.



After a fairly showery month mostly, the last week was very dry, sunny and warm. It was our Summer literally for 1997, as Summer 1997 was extremely wet for some. Ardfert, Co. Kerry recorded a maximum of 28.4c on May 31st, the highest May temperature ever recorded in Ireland - the previous highest being 27.8c in Dublin in May 1922. 25 May 2012 nearly bet this record with a maximum of 28.3c at the same station, just 0.1c short of the 1997 record. There was a lot of sunshine to be enjoyed in the warmth with widespread country amounts of 12 to 15 hours for several days.

May 1997 ended with an IMT of 11.8c which is +0.5c above the 1981-2010 average. If it were not for the cold, showery weather, it would have been a very warm May in terms of the mean.







http://www.met.ie/climate/MonthlyWeather/clim-1997-may.pdf

Whilst January 1987 was the coldest of the 80s in Britain, January 1985 was the coldest January of that decade in Ireland. The month had an IMT of 2.3c which is -3.2c below the 1981-2010 average, in comparison to 4.7c in January 1987 which is -0.8c below the 1981-2010 average and was moderated by the milder spells despite the big freeze during mid-month. I will talk about January 1987 in another post as it was such an incredible period of weather and this post is going to be focusing on January 1985 along with the PV split of early 1985.

The year started off with a significant split of the Polar Vortex within the stratosphere. This was highly unusual and there is still no comparison to it this day in terms of its extreme and occurrence - except perhaps 'til the middle of February 2018 .

This PV split is said to have had an effect on the US. This is because a record breaking freeze occurred in the eastern US following it during January 1985 after quite a warm December 1984 in the eastern US. Polar air from Canada pushed into much of the eastern US in January and shattered record low temperatures.

Due to how different this cold snap was to the warmth that had taken place in December 1984, it is suggested that there was a build up of cold air in the Arctic which was then suddenly released via a quick tropospheric response from the PV split in the stratosphere. For Europe, there doesn't seem to be any mention of this PV split having an effect on the continent but the similarities between both continents were very similar. For instance, December 1984 had an IMT of 6.1c which is +0.5c above the 1981-2010 average so was a rather mild month, compared to January 1985 at only 2.3c.



January 1985 didn't start on a particular mild note during the PV split either as it was quite cold with a block setting up over us and to the north of Europe. However, any severe cold or snow didn't really reach us 'til mid-month which would be about the minimum time you'd expect to see a tropospheric response from the PV split.



As you can see from charts like this on the 7th January 1985, Ireland is just abouts on the knife edge of quite a cold pool. Nevertheless, there was still a lot of frost and sunshine under the high pressure.



The first week or two was just generally high pressure dominated with severe frosts. By the 11th, high pressure had pushed back down to us before it starts to push over to Scandinavia and turn the winds into the east.



Firmly in a bitter easterly by the 13th/14th January with significant cold air plunging into the eastern half of Ireland in particular which would bring snow showers.





By the 16th, snow showers had spread to many parts. They caused quite some chaos in said places, especially in the east. The winter conditions caused havoc for drivers but fun times in the snow for many children whose schools had closed. Chaotic driving conditions affected bus services, and flights in and out of Dublin airport were cancelled or delayed. Snow depths varied between 5 to 22cm.



By the 20th, high pressure had retrogressed to Greenland forming a monster block up there and the Atlantic tries to invade from the south giving away to some heavy snowfalls.





The rest of January 1985 was hit and miss with some cold and wintry episodes but in a northwesterly airstream and mild episodes at other times - so quite like Winter 2017-18 here. It stayed mostly cold though.





Unfortunately, Met Éireann have no mention of January 1985 in their Snowfall in Ireland document which is quite surprising honestly.

Some notable temperatures from January 1985:

- maximum of -1.6c at Mullingar on the 17th
- maximum of 0.2c at Shannon Airport on the 18th
- air minimum of -9.5c at Ballinrobe on the 18th
- grass minimum of -17.8c at Glenties on the 6th

It was a very dry and sunny January too so it was a beautiful month! Galway had 198% of its sunshine for January and Birr had only 31% of its January rainfall.

Here's what Trevor Harley says for the UK during January 1985:

January. Very cold (0.8C CET) with frequent snow in the first three weeks. There was heavy snowfall in Kent on the 5th (25 cm of snow around Ramsgate and Margate), with maxima of -4C. The 7th was a cold day, with temperatures beneath freezing over much of the country; -16 at Jubilee Corner (Kent) on the morning of the 8th. As the cold air retreated temporarily to the continent, temperatures rose for a while, but the cold soon returned with a vengeance around the 13th. Some very low maxima on the 16th, which was one of the coldest days of the century in parts of southern Britain: -6C at Brighton and in Kent on the 16th and Shrewsbury and Wittering on the 17th. 20cms of snow over much of the south. Thaw from the 19th, preceded by a blizzard over the Highlands. There was a minimum of -19C on the 25th, rising to only -9, and a minimum of -22.4 at Aviemore on the 27th, and -23C at Braemar.

https://www.met.ie/climate-ireland/SnowfallAnal.pdf

http://www.rte.ie/archives/2015/0115/672875-snow-and-hazardous-conditions-1985/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_1985_cold_wave

Mad_Lad wrote: »

Coldest since the 80's ? but I remember much finer spells in the 80's with a lot more days of warm to very warm weather.

Springs have certainly gotten warmer since the 80s, they were very cool and wintry in the 80s with a large lack of Spring warmth back then. Summers is quite a mixed story. Here's a comparison of Summer IMTs and their anomalies from the 1981-2010 average for you.

1980-1989

1980: 14.3 (-0.5)
1981: 14.1 (-0.7)
1982: 15.1 (+0.3)
1983: 16.0 (+1.2)
1984: 15.7 (+0.9)
1985: 13.9 (-0.9)
1986: 14.0 (-0.8)
1987: 14.5 (-0.3)
1988: 14.3 (-0.5)
1989: 15.9 (+1.1)

2007-2017

2007: 14.5 (-0.3)
2008: 14.9 (+0.1)
2009: 15.4 (+0.6)
2010: 15.0 (+0.2)
2011: 13.3 (-1.5)
2012: 14.2 (-0.6)
2013: 15.7 (+0.9)
2014: 15.1 (+0.3)
2015: 13.5 (-1.3)
2016: 15.5 (+0.7)
2017: 14.6 (-0.2)

IMTs for 1963 and 1964 calculated now.

Year|Jan|Feb|Mar|Apr|May|Jun|Jul|Aug|Sep|Oct|Nov|Dec|Ann
1964|5.9|5.5|6.0|8.3|11.8|12.7|14.6|14.2|13.4|9.5|8.0|4.9|9.5
1963|-1.6|-0.6|6.7|8.0|9.7|13.5|13.8|13.6|12.0|11.1|7.5|4.5|8.1
Mean|5.5|5.3|7.1|8.5|11.3|13.7|15.4|15.4|13.0|10.1|7.2|5.6|9.8


Calculated using Met Éireann's historical data and UKMO's Northern Ireland data.

Continued from the other post before this.

Some more very cold upper air charts for Marches historically. I am choosing to look at these Marches in particular for you Large Funeral because they are the coldest Marches for the IMTs I have calculated thus far.

March 1969









March 1979

March 2013