Has this cold snap paved the way for bigger better ones further into winter?

LEIN

Was just wondering about that because i cant remember getting a cold snap like this before so early in the new winter season.

My thoughts are that sea and soil temperatures are being cooled a lot earlier this year than in previous seasons so will that lead to bigger better cold snaps or maybe we could have longer ones.

I love cold winters with lots of frost, ice and snow and as someone mentioned before a cold winter on this little island of ours is well over due.

nacho libre

I was reading a philip eden article recently and apparently not if his data is to be believed.

kerry1960

Its a bit like a nice warm spell in April/May , doesn't seem to improve the chances of the following Summer , so in my amateur opinion (and without any facts n figures ) , NO , i don't personally think a few cold/snowy days in Oct is any pointer to the following Winter , and heres's hoping im proved wrong .

If the nearby Continent was freezing and snowcovered it might be a different story , but looking at my usual 'snowcams' some are still looking pretty 'Green' .

This weeks spell was a 'fluke' , and prob a once in a lifetime event .

Couple of points:
Firstly we have air over us that has originated in polar regions.
In October or even November,it is at it's best to do what it just did to us.

I wouldn't be looking at webcams from Scandi or Eastern Europe at this stage and drawing any conclusions as to what their weather and lying snow conditions will be next dec-february because their weather then should be a LOT different.It's then that you have to look for the affect of an Easterly not now.

I would say that if we have northern blocking continuing into next january,we are likely to see one of the coldest winters in recent years with plent of snow.
It's an unknown as to whether that will happen and impossible to forecast.

However if you had this weather after Xmas with a snow covered Scandi and Central Europe-yes I'd have 10 inches of snow outside [at least] from today and yesterday and not mushy hail as it is now.

Moral of the story is-don't be getting excited [yet].

topper75

My bet is still on mild and wet with lively breeze for most of the winter.

Same then again in summer, along with increased daylight hours.:D

M.T. Cranium

I would agree that the cold spell taken alone is not much of a sign of cold weather to come, but in this case I see it as a good sign because what it actually shows is the early strength of the arctic air building up over Greenland and other parts of the arctic basin. If this cold spell came and went with a quick return to mild zonal flow patterns, then it probably could be viewed as a random piece of "noise" in terms of larger signals in the atmosphere. But if it just fades out into a pattern that is still somewhat blocked and on the cool side, then it is probably part of a larger developing blocking pattern that must increase the chances of some real wintry cold to follow.

I think this is the case in 2008-09 and my research was indicating this earlier as I mentioned in another thread. Here's what I would watch for now. There are two periods that are indicated as mild SW to W zonal and stormy periods in the research, basically mid-November and around the 10th to 15th of December. If these periods come and go without spilling over into longer periods of mild weather, especially the December case, then it will be a good sign that the blocking signal is becoming dominant. By "blocking signal" I am talking about a high pressure ridge north-south through Greenland in the western Atlantic. If that combines with lower pressure over southern Europe and doesn't "topple" through Europe with a nondescript NW flow that can bring in some Atlantic warmth, then Scandinavia is opened up for at least part of the source material for the weather in the UK and Ireland.

I think you'll have more winter than in most years since the mid-1980s, and possibly a memorably cold winter to come. If it matched one of the colder winters of the 1990s it would be at least better than most of the past ten.

There are other good signs of a more robust winter set-up all around the hemisphere at present. For example, central Alaska saw a much colder October than normal with early snow, a regime that has extended across northwest Canada. In plain language, winter has come a month early to these regions. This has provided a source region for below=normal outbreaks into central and eastern North America, but a warm ridge remains anchored over the west coast (where I am). This is a good set-up for Europe too because the next downstream ridge would be favoured to position itself near 40-60 W, the longitude of Newfoundland and Greenland. This tendency has been building in the past week as your cold spell was developing. Very mild air has been moving north into the Baffin Bay region where essentially it is cut off from moving across the Atlantic, and instead it is recycled as snow in the central and eastern arctic regions of Canada, which then reinforces the high pressure regime over Greenland when the mild low fades out. This can get to be a repeating cycle and the block can set up for longer periods.

Anyway, I wouldn't want to go hog-wild and call for a repeat of 1962-63 but the early stages of this winter season are looking somewhat similar to that legendary blocking pattern. So keep your fingers crossed (or if you don't like winter, hope I'm wrong, but then why would you be reading this if you don't like winter?)

Deedsie

Not to hijack this thread, but how did you all become so knowledgeable about Weather patterns? Could anyone suggest a book for a beginner to sink his teeth in too?

Hope it snows.

Another excelent contribution M.T Cranium !

mike65

If this is the prelude to a 62/63 winter, then I'm emptying my bank account, selling up and leaving. Seriously

Mike

Villain

For those of us who weren't born before 1962 below is a link to give an idea of what it was like:

http://www.hoganstand.com/general/identity/extras/weather/stories/196263.htm

M.T. Cranium

Deedsie: Not sure what book to recommend, probably any basic weather book might help, but ...

Just hang around weather forums, like this one on boards.ie, or possibly Net-weather, you'll pick up the concepts in no time. I would say, just read some threads about weather patterns for a while, after a month or two you'll get the hang of it, it's no more complicated than learning to drive a car really. There's really three basic kinds of weather patterns in our northern hemisphere "temperate" zone climates, warm ridges, cold troughs, and blocking where the westerlies decide to become northerlies and southerlies in various places.

Just think of a roller coaster, if it was quite flat, more like the kiddie version, that would be like "zonal flow" where systems are moving through every three or four days and it stays fairly average. Then if the roller coaster gets a bit steeper like a real fairground roller coaster, then it would depend on whether you were near the top or the bottom as to your weather for that period, the top is like a ridge and you get warm and dry weather like the summer of 2006 looking back to the last example I can think of, and the bottom would be like the summer of 2007, a "trough" where the flow is coming at you from the NW and not the SW most of the time. Then on rare occasions the roller coaster gets all disrupted like some other kind of ride where they have to strap people in, and when that happens, we call it blocking, the jet streams move far to the north then plunge down far to the south somewhere else. That's what is going on at the present time, the jet stream went far to the north around the top end of Greenland and came down through Iceland towards Ireland and Spain, then it curls around and goes up for another trip far to the north into northern Siberia.

Blocking doesn't guarantee a cold pattern, you could be on the warm side of a block and have long periods of warm southerly winds. But in winter, blocking over Europe usually brings a cold pattern. If you get right under the centre of a block, then you have massive high pressure overhead and in winter that can become intensely cold with the loss of heat to space that is called radiation. Then you get an inversion forming and the coldest air is trapped at the surface, often in a layer of fog.

Anyway, the key point is that at our latitude (it's the same here where I live even though it is on the Pacific and not the Atlantic) the weather generally comes from somewhere quite a distance away and is only modified a little or perhaps more than a little as it travels from there to "here" -- so that following a weather pattern is just a matter of understanding what the weather was like where it originated, and how much it could change as it has to cross the colder or warmer waters that lie in between there and here. When weather only has to cross land, it tends not to change nearly as much. This is why Toronto which is way further south than any part of Ireland has much colder temperatures in winter and much warmer temperatures in summer than Ireland, the air masses are coming from about the same positions relatively speaking, but they only have to cross land to get there. Your arctic air has to cross at least some distance of open water that may be 7 to 10 degrees, so it warms up a lot faster. And your tropical air has to cross cool water that is 13 to 16 degrees so it tends to cool down towards that temperature.

Anyway, what I was saying about the winter is my guess at the present time, all things considered it looks a bit more like blocking may win the battle than in most winters. But blocking is always the long shot and mild zonal flow is always the favourite in these forecasts for Ireland, so don't bet the mortgage on it.

Deep Easterly

mike65 wrote: »

If this is the prelude to a 62/63 winter, then I'm emptying my bank account, selling up and leaving. Seriously

Mike

I get the feeling you are a sunshine and warmth type of fella..

LEIN

Cheers for info lads.

For the cold lovers lets hope M.T. Cranium is right!

@Mike. Lol sunny south east could escape the brunt of any cold snap.

Just send it all to the east, whoever doesn't want it.

arctictree

Just wondering, are there cases in the past where cold snaps have started in late October and lasted the whole winter?

Apparently, even the bitter winter of 62/63 was preceded by a mild early December.

asdasd

Thanks. MT. I was going to start a thread asking how we could ever get a 62/63 type winter. I always thought our weather came from the (south)west, or it didn't come at all ( blocking high). What I didn't understand is how snow could fall and stay for 3 months.

Problem sorted.

baldieman

If you guys really want to know what we may be in for, than check out solar cycle 24








Solar cycle #24 - Bad Astronomy and Universe Today Forum

Supercell

Eh? I see nowt in the post above that makes sense, am I the only one?

LEIN

Supercell wrote: »

Eh? I see nowt in the post above that makes sense, am I the only one?

Had to google part of that post to make sense of it. Its all about sun spots and the new solar cycle.

It doesn't tell us if we are in for a cold winter though.

mike65

Deep Easterly,

It does not have to any more than 22c and sunny. I think a notable aspect of the 62/63 winter was how dull it often was. Anyone have info on that?

Cold and dark - nothing worse.

Mike

LEIN

Mike i think there is a link for info on that near the start of the thread.


Here it is again

http://www.hoganstand.com/general/id...ies/196263.htm

Just as an observation,this is the third or fourth day in a row that a line of showers has built up just off the coast from Dublin south to Wexford affecting the coast and maybe 10 miles inland.
Anyone living along that stretch will have been battered by hail during the night.

Thats exactly what used happen in the 1980's January and february Easterlies...

Kippure

Deleted User wrote: »

Just as an observation,this is the third or fourth day in a row that a line of showers has built up just off the coast from Dublin south to Wexford affecting the coast and maybe 10 miles inland.
Anyone living along that stretch will have been battered by hail during the night.

Thats exactly what used happen in the 1980's January and february Easterlies...

Very true, Since we are in a hale winter, i think we will get a snowy cold winter this time round. Very differant patterns this year, Alot of cold building up to the north of us very early this year.

For once things seem to be on our side.

asdasd

Ah we all love the cold here I see :-)

Me too. Give me hoar frost and snow, and bright cold mornings over wet miserable warm winters any time.

LEIN

This would have been an interesting chart in late December and after.

kerry1960

M.T.C. Excellent post as usual , puts my amateur response rightfully in it's place , your posts are fair and balanced and you are always tolerant of the odd stupid comment from the likes of me ,and thanks for that , yes i am very much a cold weather fan but unfortunately 'Murphys Law' seems to govern the Weather patterns in County Kerry , hence my apathetic response to the title.........

One more thing M.T.C. what are your Irish connections .

M.T. Cranium

Kerry, not sure about any "stupid comments" -- I'm the one speculating about cold weather in the winter.

My connection to Ireland or at least Irish weather is mostly through this forum, one of the active members mentioned it to me about a year ago. He knew that I was interested in British Isles weather, I've been active on UK weather forums for almost four years now. That interest is mostly due to my research interests in global climate, although I was born in the UK so that adds another reason to be interested in it. My background is Irish at least on my mother's side, my birth name was O'Donnell and I have always had friends born in Ireland, it seems. Have only managed one visit so far, although that was long enough to see quite a bit of the country. Have found the weather quite interesting in the year that I've been watching carefully, and it's always nice to meet some people who know their weather etc, so that's about it.

No magic potions or secret formulae or funny hats. I suspect they are out there though, looking at some of the monthly "guesses."