GFS Promises Christmas Heatwave

Met Eireann have kindly informed me that

The previous max on Xmas day was 14.6 deg. C at Piltown, Co. Kilkenny in 2002

Obviously the 15.0C at Ashford exceeds that and to date no higher readings have been reported.

Will have to wait until the climatological station reports are in and assessed to see if any other stations reported higher. This will take a month if not more.

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Why does it show 14.9c > http://www.wicklowweather.com/NOAAMO.TXT

The daily mean of 13c must be a record as well.

That's my personal AWS which is unrelated to the Met E climate station, except that they are in the same field
AWS commenced in 1999, climate station in July 2002

There are about 80 climatological stations including the synoptic and Tucson stations (Met E automatic stations). Observations are taken at the manual stations once a day at 0900gmt and this data is sent to HQ after each month.

Most of the climate station data is here (wind is AWS)

The extremes page is based on 0900-0900 data for temperature extremes, 00-24 day for wind and sunshine. the daily mean for the 26th is a record high.

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Two of your top 5 December temps set in the last week alone

http://www.wicklowweather.com/extremes.htm

Air Temperature Extremes

December

16.4°C 6th 2007
15.3 04/07
15.0 25/11
14.6 21/11
14.4 30/04

and your highest december daily minimum.

11.8°C 25th 2011

Looks like Saturday is the only 'warm' excursion left in this episode and then everything heads back towards a 5c typical January average for the next two weeks.

That min temp was on the 26th. The min temp for 25th was 6.0C. This min temp highlights one of the anomalies of the once a day max/mins.

The max and min temperatures for the past 24 hours are taken at 0900gmt. The max temp is applied to the previous day and the min temp applied to current day. So the 15.0C was read on the morning of the 26th.

The 6C min for the 25th was actually the current temp on the morning of the 24th. The min thermometer was reset to this temperature and it never went lower and so carried through to the 0900 obs on morning of 25th to be the min for the 25th. In fact by midnight (24/25th) the temp was almost 11C.
This is the way once a day readings have been done for centuries. Whats important is that this methodology continues. So while we see 00-24 data from AWS including the Met E stations on Met.ie and other websites, when it comes to the temperature and rainfall pages in the monthly weather bulletins, the data is 09-09z data and the data doesn't always match.

Right I'm closing this thread.