All Things Met Eireann Related Go in Here (MOD NOTE #1)

Musicmental85 wrote: »

I would generally be very much on met eireannn side but there has been sticking snow at low levels never mind higher ground all day from places across the country-Longford, carrick on Shannon and all the northern counties as the day wore on. The forecast in question by Gerry did not even mention this and we were only 24 hours odd out from the event.

I understand that met eireann need to be a lot more secure in their forecasts than everyone on here who does not have a country paying attention but people on higher ground could, and really should have been warned on Wednesday night and not had to wait until Thursday when the snow was hitting that night.

whitebriar wrote: »

I deleted my post in the main thread as its more relevant here.Two contrasting radio one forecasts today
Siobhan Ryan this morning-dusting of snow slight risk of disruption monday

John Eagleton lunchtime - Cold easterly winds,temperature dropping well back.
No mention of showers by him and no mention of snow,even in the sea area part where you'd think visibility would be important.


Are met Eireann independent contractors now,do they talk to each other at all?

This is all highly unprofessional,it seems to me,not alone for the inconsistency between the two,but also for what seems to be a complete brush over of what we(regular posters here) see in the models.
If I'm wrong,I will admit it,but at present,this seems a valid criticism,I cannot understand their approach.

I wouldn't be expecting them to use Mt craniums expectations/risk but for heavens sake...Could they at least be consistent in the message between forecasts and at this juncture inform the public in the east and south of the risk.

M.T. Cranium wrote: »

There was of course some fairly significant snowfall in two regions (in the ROI) from reports on Boards, namely the southeast corner including Waterford city and a zone in Meath-Offaly. But even outside those zones, just because snow didn't accumulate to any great depth doesn't mean it had no impact. People still had to drive in it, and some ice resulted on pavement. The impact on agriculture was probably quite significant.

Without Boards, I feel that most of Ireland would have been rather surprised by the amount of snow (in the air) and to some extent the degree of the chill. Maybe not, but we made an effort to assess things and I honestly feel it was a reasonable effort, maybe we got a bit unlucky with the snow not accumulating (those of us including myself who were saying accumulations, that is, some were not). Maybe it is better to be wrong on the conservative side, that is obviously the philosophy of most government weather services. The market will determine these things if in fact there really is a market and not a rigged monopoly. You'll have to decide which of those you have, I'm too far away to give an opinion on it. Here in Canada, I have felt for a long time that the economics are tilted towards a monopoly; in the U.S.A. the tradition of private forecasting is far more advanced. If nothing else, the private forecaster has nowhere to hide when things go south, in a large organization somebody confronted about a bad forecast can always say, "I wasn't on duty that day" although "the models" are always the whipping boys of choice.

Anyway, from my perspective, any errors were based simply on subjective interpretation, I think it was fairly obvious what was going to happen in terms of structure, but things were just marginally too dry (more than being too warm) for the snow produced to stick on the ground in most of Dublin. I find it a bit mystifying because Dublin is at 53 deg N and snow sticks on the ground at 2 C in New England at 43 deg N, you would think the small amount of insolation getting through there would be at least the equal but maybe the sun tries a bit harder over Europe knowing how many regulatory agencies there are. The sun knows that American courts are too busy with serious matters to get on his (its/her) case.

Or maybe it's those ley lines.