July 2010 Boards forecast contest

pauldry

Deep Easterly wrote: »

Sounds interesting!

In relation to the above heres what the book showed

Rainfall Spring and Summer 1912-2007

Year/ April Rain % / Summer Rain %(june, july. aug)

1912 14 207
1954 24 156
1957 15 134
1974 21 123
1980 30 141
1982 36 127
1997 37 145
2007 17 175

This could be a clue to predicting future Summers. They dont give the figures for 1984 but they do say that it was the only dry April that was followed by a dry Summer.

Rainfall is a percentage of Normal and also to keep on topic it could also be a secret to doing well in the boards contest . Certainly not.:D

M.T. Cranium

What's a good event in August for a forecast? Preferably the weekend of 7-8 August?

pauldry

GAA in Croke Park Probably:o

Joe Public

You could use the Tullamore Agriculture Show on Sunday 8th Aug which was cancelled in 2007 & 2008 due to flooding.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeUF_Jw1O6U

Tullamore is in Offaly and also Gurteen but, at a guess, about 20 miles apart.

M.T. Cranium

You'd think they would pass that off to another town (flooded out twice in a row). Sounds like a good plan (the forecast, not the pass off). We'll do perhaps the max temp and rainfall for the day.

Joe Public

M.T. Cranium wrote: »

You'd think they would pass that off to another town (flooded out twice in a row). Sounds like a good plan (the forecast, not the pass off). We'll do perhaps the max temp and rainfall for the day.

Yes, they considered moving it to a town in Spain as the whole country was in muck and floods in "summer" 2007 & 2008:)

M.T. Cranium

After 21 days, the updates for rainfall and sunshine continue the trends from the last report. With the past seven days showing 265% of normal, that edges up the monthly figure to about 250%. With sunshine this past week only 69% of normal, that pulls down the monthly average to 78% of normal.

Seems likely that the rainfall will fall a bit -- if it were to turn out dry now to end of month (which is more than just a quarter) then the current surplus would guarantee 170% and a more likely finishing figure might be 190-200. For sunshine, if values returned to say 120% in a brighter spell, the monthly average would recover to nearly 90%.

I don't think the IMT has moved much but it could edge upwards too. DE will have an update on that for us shortly, I would imagine.

Deep Easterly

M.T. Cranium wrote: »

I don't think the IMT has moved much but it could edge upwards too. DE will have an update on that for us shortly, I would imagine.

You're right, IMT remaining fairly static over the last while. 15.4c currently. At this stage last year it was on 15.1c.

Like last July, mean maxima is running slightly below normal across the IMT zone while mean minima is running over a degree above.


Warm nights, average days, ugh! :p

pauldry

dunno if this was the min temperature of the month so far but heres the link anyhows

http://www.ogimet.com/cgi-bin/gsynext?lang=en&state=Irel&rank=100&ano=2010&mes=07&day=23&hora=12&Send=send

John mac

I think it may have got colder than that last night. (after midnight)

4.1 would do me.

Deep Easterly

pauldry wrote: »

dunno if this was the min temperature of the month so far but heres the link anyhows

http://www.ogimet.com/cgi-bin/gsynext?lang=en&state=Irel&rank=100&ano=2010&mes=07&day=23&hora=12&Send=send

So far this month, Co. Mayo has been wettest, windiest, and now, the coldest area of the country. Can it go the full hog and record the highest temp of the month?

Speak Now

Deep Easterly wrote: »

So far this month, Co. Mayo has been wettest, windiest, and now, the coldest area of the country. Can it go the full hog and record the highest temp of the month?

Mayo eh...what about....you know.....C*******e

Deep Easterly

Jerry Seinfeld wrote: »

Mayo eh...what about....you know.....C*******e

Sorry, but C*******e will never bate Mayo!!!! :D:D

Deep Easterly

Sorry guys, for some reason the charts are not showing up I edited the attachments twice but they seem to keep vanishing.

Will post them up again tomorrow (Haven't the strengh to import from Excel again tonight) and will add the annual mean temp chart as well.

Deep Easterly

Ok, hopefully the charts will stay up this time!


Chart graphing annual mean % of normal rainfall up to 23rd July:




So far, we are drier than normal across the IMT zone.

Station breakdown:



Annual temp up to the 23rd:



2010 so far is a little cooler than normal, by 0.21c to be exact. At this stage in 2009, it can be seen that we were way above. The depth of the winter just passed is still still having an influence on this years trend but it is slowly but surely recovering.



Data source: Met Eireann

M.T. Cranium

I believe that 6.3 C at Claremorris from the 23rd is now the low for the month? If so, Jerry Seinfeld has the closest forecast so far with his 6.2 ... a number of others are close too. I think it was around 3 C at Castlederg but of course ... and wasn't it -7 at DE's house?

I have the feeling the high for the month may come this week.

And the rain for the month has already fallen, shall we say? (mostly)

Give me some feedback on this idea ... I do have this "minimum scoring rule" but with the month being so wet, I am a little reluctant to hand out a lot of points, perhaps if I go 8,6,4,2 (out of 15) for the first four and check to ensure those are higher scores than would normally be awarded, then give 1 to anyone else who went above 110 per cent. I can make up a secondary rule to cover this sort of massive field error, I was thinking more along the lines of a distorted curve than a swing and a miss like we have this month.

But your feedback will determine whether I go to this somewhat lower outcome, otherwise we go 12,10,9 etc down to 1 in order no matter how far off these guesses may be. Whatever you guys think is fair.

By the way, if anyone's heading out on holidays and wants to enter early for August, just PM me and give the usual stuff plus the high for the day and rainfall in mms for Sunday the 8th at Gurteen (for the event discussed above). I won't start the thread until Monday or so.

Joe Public

My "unbiased" preference is to go with your latter suggestion i.e. 12,10,9,....

Lumi

Joe Public wrote: »

My "unbiased" preference is to go with your latter suggestion i.e. 12,10,9,....

+1 and again 'totally unbiased' of course

pauldry

I have no idea what ur on about MT but with rain it should be left as it is and if people were wrong tough. Thats what owenc would say (I think).

Whatever, as long as Im not penalized coz I predicted 125% and its about the only thing I got close to.

Didnt think it would be so UNsunny:mad:

pauldry

Is that all youv got High temperatures?

Julys high looks like its been reached at 24(ish) Celcius in either Oak Park or Johnstone Castle.

I though today would get to 25 or 26 but then it turned fair down there and "fresher" conditions are now forecast till the end of the month. So those of you that predicted a max in the 24s are on the money for July 2010.

Incidentally is the IMT 15.5c?
Min 6.3c
Sun 78%?
Rain 1MILLION PERCENT

MT and DE lettuce know soon.

M.T. Cranium

Okay, I will stick with plan A with the rainfall and award 12, 10, 9 etc down to 1 point ... and merry Christmas to anyone who gets points ... meanwhile, will be opening up the August thread in a few minutes.

M.T. Cranium

The fourth week of July (22-28) has come in with rainfall only 25% of normal and sunshine still sub-par at 73% (I don't know why we say sub-par, because sub-par is good in golf).

Anyway, this reduces the enormous damage of the monthly rainfall total somewhat and brings it down to about 180% of normal (only) -- the drought watch begins in earnest. Meanwhile, sunshine stays about where it was before, lagging below 77%. I believe the IMT has crept up a few tenths and looks to finish around 15.7 perhaps.

With some rain and perhaps average sunshine the last three days of the month, would expect the above to resemble the finishing numbers (which can only move slightly now).

Had some hopes of seeing a higher monthly max but this would take a very lucky combination of sunshine and location tomorrow (the discussed value of 24.2 remains to be confirmed because Dublin had no official report last time I looked at the same day, 26th).

Danno

Dublin Apt got 24.0c on July 26th according to... http://www.met.ie/climate/daily-data.asp - that is a handy page to bookmark MTC for your role!

Deep Easterly

Just one day to go before the final stats but one thing is certain is that mean max across the imt region will finish below normal while mean minima will finish above normal by a considerable margin. This seems to be a recurring trend throughout the last few summers. Crap average daytime summer temps follow by sticky warmer than average nights. My own stats here in Galway east suggest the same, with daytime temperatures throughout the entire month never passing average. Didn't even make it to a full 21c on the 2 days we did manage to pass 20c this month!!!

Deep Easterly

Final July I.M.T 2010 finished at 15.7c, which is 0.6c above normal. Mean max 19.3c, 0.1c below normal; whilst mean min finished at 12.1c, 1.3c above average. Subjectively speaking, I think the western half of Ireland was handed a bad deal by the weather gods this July relative to the eastern half regarding sunshine and temps esp with cool daytime temps and very little sunshine on any particular day. We really need a continental plume before summer's end :(:(


While a wet month, July 2010 proved to be not quite as wet as July 2009 on average, although Claremorris & Mullingar still gathered almost 200mm & 150mm respectively this month.

Chart showing % of normal rainfall this July (July 2009 % totals included for comparison) at the 5 met eireann stations used for the comp:




Bar chart displaying the combined 2 year average total for both July 2009 and July 2010:



North midlands and west seem to be bearing the brunt overall in the last couple of Julys.



Chart graphing the combined average mean daily max temperature for August(based on 61-90 normals) of stations Galway/Birr and Pheonix Park, which can be used as a guide as to what to expect max wise across the country in this most dark and volatile of summer months:



A warm month overall but with a slight decline into autumn evident towards the end.



Forecast chart for the coming mid-week period:



Ireland forecast to continue to lie between weak lows to the north and a strong azores high to the near southwest. The coming week looks pretty much like last week with occasional weak frontal troughs bringing the odd light shower or band of rain interspersed with some watery sunshine. Temps likely to remain near average by day but still could be very mild on most night due to cloud cover spilling in of the Atlantic.

Tentative signs that heavier rain or showers could develop towards the end of the week with cooler temps.


Christ, I am just about plum tuckered after all that!!!! :pac:

thetonynator

Thanks for that DE. . . A bad month for me overall i think. . .

M.T. Cranium

It will likely be Tuesday before I have all the official stats available, although I could pretty much start scoring now from what's already known and the use of the "adjusted scoring rule" otherwise known as free points for the people who had a faint premonition of what lay ahead (and I do mean faint).

Just at a rough estimate I would say Danno has lapped the field this month with many, many points ... around 90 anyway. Among other feats, he had the IMT bang on (so did a few others including Con Sensus) and a high estimate for the 15th rainfall.

But we'll have to wait for the official numbers to verify all that.

Speak Now

thetonynator wrote: »

Thanks for that DE. . . A bad month for me overall i think. . .

You said same last month and did alright, bet you'll done fine.

thetonynator

Jerry Seinfeld wrote: »

You said same last month and did alright, bet you'll done fine.

i mean it this month! I was surprised last month. . .
It doesn't really matter as i can't win, i will only have 10 months entered, i missed jan and feb. When everyone elses bad months are taken out i will be way down the pile. . . Still, its nice to enter it and make some post of a stab at it!

M.T. Cranium

Here are the official figures then for July ...

IMT ... 15.7 C
Max ... 24.2 (Oak Park, 26th)
Min ..... 6.3 (Claremorris, 23rd)
Rain .... 216% (11 stations)
Sun ...... 76% (6 sites)
Rain 15th was 23.7 mms (Mullingar)

and St Swithin is looking like a genius so far.

BTW, if you notice that rainfall is a bit higher than my running estimates, this is because I use all the data in the agricultural section of the met.ie website and there are 14 stations reporting there. For example, Dublin (A) which was probably one of the lower totals for July was in that running average but not used in the table for rainfall in the monthly summary. The sunshine figures are going to match up as these are the same stations that we check during the month.

Scoring will be announced in the annual scoring thread as soon as possible, probably around 6 p.m. -- see you there.