Model Outooks: Winter 2008/2009

Villain

Six-one weather showed the High coming west towards at the weekend with max temps of 4C for Friday and Saturday.

I wonder will we ever see a scenario where instead of downgrades as we get nearer to an event all we get is upgrades.

MUSEIST

Well the ECM seems to be a bit better:o it may not be all over yet

shamwari

Just as I suspected. The whole thing would start to unravel closer to the event.

But to be fair to the knowledgeable ones here, they did say that everything was in FI and was not cast in stone !

snowfan

Good point Shamwari

In fairness to the experienced posters, all FI charts were heavily qualified

My own policy going forward will be to only believe charts that are +T72, ie charts that are within our grasp

To believe anything else is just foolhardy - we have to take into account the fact that we are the most western country in Europe and prone to mild muck all year around :mad:

Personally speaking, the thought of January 09 being a month of mild wet weather with highs of +13/14oC and consistent rain bands from the Atlantic with no sign of snow or hard frost is a killer!!

Why oh why, after a year of rain, can't we get at least one decent snow event? :mad:

Snowfan

Pangea

I know a lot of posts have been deleted but some are just discussing the potential snow etc. and are in relation to the outlook for the winter.
Check this out weatheronline.co.uk are suggesting snow on the 5th in ireland and heavy snow in england on the 6th

http://www.weatheronline.co.uk/cgi-app/reports?LANG=en&MENU=203


"the problem is deciding on whether a period of sleet and snow could push through Ireland"

shamwari

snowfan wrote: »

Good point Shamwari

In fairness to the experienced posters, all FI charts were heavily qualified

My own policy going forward will be to only believe charts that are +T72, ie charts that are within our grasp

To believe anything else is just foolhardy - we have to take into account the fact that we are the most western country in Europe and prone to mild muck all year around :mad:

Personally speaking, the thought of January 09 being a month of mild wet weather with highs of +13/14oC and consistent rain bands from the Atlantic with no sign of snow or hard frost is a killer!!

Why oh why, after a year of rain, can't we get at least one decent snow event? :mad:

Snowfan

I ask myself the same question too sometimes snowfan: what has changed so much in the last few years that we can't have a decent dump of snow!

snowfan

Hey Shamwari,

I was a kid of about 6 back in 1982 when the big Snow came to the East Coast and still remember the snow drifts and icicles and temps dropping well below freezing..

I also remember some decent snowfalls for the rest of the 1980's and the 1990's .....looking back I did not appreciate them and saw them as a pain! Now I would love to see a decent snowfall

Last decent one here was in 2001!

What has gone wrong? Is it Global warming ??

Deep Easterly

Well I can't see any cause of panic just yet anyway. Latest ECMWF offering still looks pretty decent up to 168hrs.

http://91.121.93.17/pics/Recm1201.gif
http://91.121.93.17/pics/Recm1441.gif
http://91.121.93.17/pics/Recm1681.gif

Plenty of nice, dry cool weather on offer. The run thereafter is once again all over the shop and completely different from this morning's outlook. I would expect more chaos over the next few days regarding the models beyond this timeframe to be honest.

But, at least potential is now nearing the "reliable" timeframe.

Although I wouldn't mind see a decent storm brewing up on the models either. I miss them.

SpitfireIV

Deep Easterly wrote: »

Although I wouldn't mind see a decent storm brewing up on the models either. I miss them.

It seems that we are long over due a good snow event, as well as a good storm! Only thing is, which will we get first, personally I'd prefer the snow event ......

......or maybe a stormy snow event? Well, one can dream

shamwari

snowfan wrote: »

Hey Shamwari,

I was a kid of about 6 back in 1982 when the big Snow came to the East Coast and still remember the snow drifts and icicles and temps dropping well below freezing..

I also remember some decent snowfalls for the rest of the 1980's and the 1990's .....looking back I did not appreciate them and saw them as a pain! Now I would love to see a decent snowfall

Last decent one here was in 2001!

What has gone wrong? Is it Global warming ??

2001 was the last snowfall we had here. We narrowly missed out Christmas 2004 when down the road, they had 3 inches! I dunno what the cause of no significant snow is since 2001 but I reckon its more down to bad luck the global warming.

Back on topic, I've looked at the links which DE has kindly posted and whilst they offer some hope of a snow event, they are but a patch on what was the potential was up to yesterday. As always, we live in hope..:pac:

daviddwyer

So dissappointing was looking forward to brighten up the gloomy mucky days of January. But to be fair we were warned all along that it was only a "potential" sowe can only blame ourselves for getting overexcited. God I wish I had never looked at a single model......

arctictree

Just had a look at GFS and ECM 12z.

OK, it looks like there is some significant break in the weather due for next Monday. I think that is the day to watch.

The next 48 hrs will try to bring this into the reliable timeframe.

snowfan

arctictree wrote: »

Just had a look at GFS and ECM 12z.

OK, it looks like there is some significant break in the weather due for next Monday. I think that is the day to watch.

The next 48 hrs will try to bring this into the reliable timeframe.

Hi Arctictree, can you elaborate on "significant break" for next Monday ?
Are we talking major cold or some mild Atlantic westerlies? Hopefully the former!!

Darwin

CroppyBoy1798 wrote: »

It seems that we are long over due a good snow event, as well as a good storm! Only thing is, which will we get first, personally I'd prefer the snow event ......

......or maybe a stormy snow event? Well, one can dream

Sorry if this is a little off topic, but if I remember rightly the last storm we had was in early March of this year. I kept some screenshots for posterity from Met Eireann's 3-hour forecast which showed the progress of the storm (sustained winds of over 50 knots at it's core out in the Atlantic) - the worst of it arrived over the midlands around 2am. It was one scary night! I'll post the charts if I can find them.

arctictree

snowfan wrote: »

Hi Arctictree, can you elaborate on "significant break" for next Monday ?
Are we talking major cold or some mild Atlantic westerlies? Hopefully the former!!

The current charts are showing an Atlantic storm passing to the south of us dragging in cold easterlies and hitting the already cold air over Ireland. If the cold wins out we could get a dumping of snow. If the Atlantic wins out we could just have cold rain. Equally possible is that the storm could just miss us completely as it is still 7 days out and still in FI.

If the charts are still the same in two days time, then we will be able to start forecasting the weather for that day.

A

SpitfireIV

Darwin wrote: »

Sorry if this is a little off topic, but if I remember rightly the last storm we had was in early March of this year. I kept some screenshots for posterity from Met Eireann's 3-hour forecast which showed the progress of the storm (sustained winds of over 50 knots at it's core out in the Atlantic) - the worst of it arrived over the midlands around 2am. It was one scary night! I'll post the charts if I can find them.

Ah, I must have slept through that one so , I was thinking more along the lines of Christmas eve '97, or was that a bad storm as storms go?

Well if we got the storm out of the way then its the snow event next :P

Danno

Another hour until the 18z GFS starts rolling out. This will be the first indicator of what is to come. We have a reasonable enough cold feed at the moment, just to build on what we have in place before the atlantic raids again is the key.

Snowbie

Not great ensembles



This is the only exciting chart in ECM and its outside reliable. Really poor runs today.

Snowaddict

I've only looked at the latest runs now, haven't had a chance to look at any runs at all since yesterday, but since I last saw the GFS ensembles, they have definately trended in the wrong direction with a clear rise in the upper 850hPA temps from what I can make out from the latest outputs (GFS 12Z ensembles).

As ever with any potential wintry outbreak, charts need to be at T+72 at least before any certainty can be guaranteed.

All hope not lost as of yet, but I must say those ensembles and some of the latest runs do not look very good, although these can change quite drastically from run to run. GFS operatonal was a major mild outlier on the latest run. I will check in again as soon as possible. It may potentially be a case that GFS is having a wobble and will soon go back to the very cold outlook or it may be that its spotting a new trend. Either way, we should know soon enough.

Thanks to everyone for the updates on here, I'm not able to see many of the outputs at the moment.

EDIT: Just saw ECM, its quite good out to T+168.

Regards,
SA.

Danno

Had a good ganter over the 12z and what a brutal run it was indeed. It does not seem like anything plausable at all... high pressure cells diving down from the north on the west side of a PV over Scandyland is not normality at all. I think a bottle of vodka or two got thrown in the mix for that run!
Although the 12z run was a disaster for snow and cold here, I will still say that the 18z due out very soon *should* show a major improvement. Hopefully no crazy stuff like the 12z. :rolleyes:

Villain

Model watching can't be good for the soul, all these high's and lows.

Lets hope the 18z shows a big upgrade although the ensembles don't seem great unless your on the east coast of the UK

Pangea

your right there ,all theses highs and lows , one would begin to wonder whats the point in all these outlooks as they change in a different direction every day, no hate ,just giving my opinion.
:eek:

snowfan

Pangea wrote: »

your right there ,all theses highs and lows , one would begin to wonder whats the point in all these outlooks as they change in a different direction every day, no hate ,just giving my opinion.
:eek:

I could not agree more Pangea....although a lot of the posts are heavily qualified...we still get our hopes up. Its human nature after all....soul destroying!

Snowbie

It's weather and that is the beauty of it, it's unpredictable. It can show us how insignificant we are on this tiny little island on this tiny little world when it rears it's ugly, unforgiving or fascinating self.

I really say it's exhausting for some getting there hopes up for the cold and then not to appear or when it does appear and the snow near miss's you or worse gives cold rain. Whats worse?

It's a fun read this, i use to be like this a long time ago.
C,mon 18Z put us out of our misery and let Atlantic in or will it keep us guessing.

LEIN

Could be that snow storm people where looking for but way out in FI.

j1979p

Not a good 18z at all

arctictree

18z rolling out now. Has made a significant shift from the 12z at t+120. Will be interesting to see how it turns out.

Danno

The Greenland high is much stronger with thicker air and much more WAA than earlier runs. A low to our SW, a low to our NE come Saturday.

Snowaddict

I won't be able to see the rest of this run, but all I can say is that out to T+144...

The 18Z GFS operational is definately trending in the right direction, and much different to the previous run.

An excellent Greenland high out to T+144.

In the more reliable, this run is much better, but the usual caveat of this being just one run applies.

However, I think this run is trending towards 12Z ECMWF.

Regards,
SA.

snowfan

So, in layman terms, is there still a good chance of a decent cold spell?