Cold Spell Prospects and Discussion (January + Early Feb 2012)

hotwhiskey

GFS sticking to its guns. Its a shoot out now.

A bit of a setback just read on Twitter:

Matt Hugo: Still some interesting ECM ENS clusters but there is a shift towards the GFS solution unfortunately for cold weather fans this evening

Tom Cruises Left Nut

hotwhiskey wrote: »

GFS sticking to its guns. Its a shoot out now.

A bit of a setback just read on Twitter:

Matt Hugo: Still some interesting ECM ENS clusters but there is a shift towards the GFS solution unfortunately for cold weather fans this evening

Im with the ECM and not just cause of what it shows !

Its ensembles show the best support, take a look they are excellent. GFS is all over the place !

davidsr20

Does anyone know when we might get a Deffinate on this cold spell because it's still very mixed feeling from all sides!also is it just the east that s likely to get the worst or what's the west looking like?

pistolpetes11

t|nt|n wrote: »

Im with the ECM and not just cause of what it shows !

Its ensembles show the best support, take a look they are excellent. GFS is all over the place !

Matt Hugo doesnt seem to think so ,

But on the other hand , mark voghan could get Joey b on the blower again .

trying not to get my hopes up with some of the excellent charts

pistolpetes11

davidsr20 wrote: »

Does anyone know when we might get a Deffinate on this cold spell because it's still very mixed feeling from all sides!also is it just the east that s likely to get the worst or what's the west looking like?

When you are looking out your window at your Lampost and you see the white speckles of Joy, is when you will know with this setup at present

Tom Cruises Left Nut

pistolpetes11 wrote: »

Matt Hugo doesnt seem to think so ,

But on the other hand , mark voghan could get Joey b on the blower again .

trying not to get my hopes up with some of the excellent charts

Relax !!

It will all go into line bu Sunday

Charge the laptop NOW !!!

hotwhiskey

t|nt|n wrote: »

Im with the ECM and not just cause of what it shows !

Its ensembles show the best support, take a look they are excellent. GFS is all over the place !

I agree with you with the ensenbles, just posting what Matt tweeted.

On the other hand the GFS has stuck with the same senario for the last three days at least. I really thought today we would see common ground between the two modules ECM and GFS but no, one is black and the other white.:rolleyes:

Tom Cruises Left Nut

hotwhiskey wrote: »

I agree with you with the ensenbles, just posting what Matt tweeted.

On the other hand the GFS has stuck with the same senario for the last three days at least. I really thought today we would see common ground between the two modules ECM and GFS but no, one is black and the other white.:rolleyes:

Tis a tough one, its just hard when you look at the ensembles of the ECM

This is the agreement at 168



The GFS ensemble graphs have been all over the place, thats why I am sticking to the ECM and to an extent GEM and JMA !

ECM:



GEM:



JMA:

jirafa

Having viewed the GFS recent runs,,me not a happy bunny as far as the outlook for snow is concerned..Come Sunday night,having viewed the latest,,I could be raising the white flag,,,,as far as snow is concerned for Jan.Hope I am wrong.




:mad::mad::mad::(:(:(:(

derekon

jirafa wrote: »

Having viewed the GFS recent runs,,me not a happy bunny as far as the outlook for snow is concerned..Come Sunday night,having viewed the latest,,I could be raising the white flag,,,,as far as snow is concerned for Jan.Hope I am wrong.




:mad::mad::mad::(:(:(:(

Why ?

The ECM has proved to be a lot more reliable than the GFS. So I would be a lot more concerned if the ECM was the one not showing the cold

D

je55ie

jirafa wrote: »

Having viewed the GFS recent runs,,me not a happy bunny as far as the outlook for snow is concerned..Come Sunday night,having viewed the latest,,I could be raising the white flag,,,,as far as snow is concerned for Jan.Hope I am wrong.

:mad::mad::mad::(:(:(:(

Ah theres time yet keep positive

Put down the flag and get up off the ground man!!

jirafa

je55ie wrote: »

Ah theres time yet keep positive

Put down the flag and get up off the ground man!!

Havent thrown in the towel yet je55ie, but I have done a few dummy runs,,,just in case I have to.




PS...Its January I am on about..not Feb or March.

Nabber

GFS & ECM looking very similar. ECM plunging the cold further south into Eastern Europe


GFS +144



ECM +138

IrishHomer

RTE late night forecast just gave -8 for next weekend :eek:

Rebelbrowser

RTE still ramping on midnight weather. Must be fairly confident.

Irish Steve

ME Quote " Our weather could well turn VERY WINTRY next weekend" said with a BIG smile

If ME are going public with a pretty strong hint this early, they must be reasonably confident that things are looking in that direction, the synoptic chart was certainly thought provoking, Polar Northerly is not exactly spring.

RTE News also did the weather no harm by saying earlier that "Spring appeared to have arrived early". Well. You pays your money, you takes your choice.................

oterra

Rebelbrowser wrote: »

RTE still ramping on midnight weather. Must be fairly confident.

Yea Evelyns certainly not backing down on next weekend. Northeasterly looking promising.

Pangea

I'm pretty sure that was Darkman in a Evelyn Cusack disguise suit :pac:

screamer

Hmm... still, I don't trust Met Eireann's predictions, I'll wait till MT gives his verdict.

M.T. Cranium

GFS has struggled all winter with 6-10 day time frame and there are such large-scale changes underway in north Pacific sector that I think the ECM must be considered the favourite. I even remain suspicious that the ECM has undercooked the speed of the pattern change, this could come on very strong in a day or two, Siberian highs moving west are notoriously difficult to model accurately. This current cold high is probably a sign that the Atlantic is dying out, the return fire mid-week could be swept into a vortex of subarctic height crashes over Denmark.

I like this idea of naming the various daily snow events, I'm certainly on for more than one day of snow but will gladly take Sunday 22nd under the title MTC's Thundersnow 2.0.

By the way, I don't support any idea of a massive 1947 style pattern change lasting weeks and creating chaos, probably 2-3 weeks is about the most this spell would last before reverting back to milder weather.

srocliffe

screamer wrote: »

Hmm... still, I don't trust Met Eireann's predictions, I'll wait till MT gives his verdict.

He already did, earlier tonight on this thread http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=76497733&postcount=565

Calibos

Sponge Bob wrote: »

I bags naming rights for the 22nd for MT.

Quick Recap on the situation as it has developed rapidly.

19th Wolfies Blizzard
20th Wild Bill Blizzard
21st The Great Wolfie Blizzard
22nd The MT Blizzard or the Canadian Blizzard (MTs choice)
23rd EnderBlizzard
24th The Great White Out of Jan 24th (Redsunset may wish to reconsider that one in time )
25th Baracablizzard
26th The Su Su Super Snowstorm
27th The BEASTERLY'S Easterly Blizzard
28th The great blizzard of Ireland except the south east Onlyone
29th Del's winter-wonder land Delw
30th Robbos Revenge Blizzard ( Heres 2 u Mrs R)
31st The Docharch wouldn't name it Blizzard

Rules

One Name per day. Line up for the rest of January the rest of ye and
No naming of any Feb events allowed.
Sponge Bob not allowed to have any snow event named after himself in January 2012.
If you don't like your day name PM me your choice of name for it.
Final entries by posting into this thread by saturday 14th at midday Z

I have a Dilemma. The 26th of January was given to Su Campu in his absence. His absence means he cannot give permission to re-allocate it.

Its....its just...its just that....the 26th of January is my birthday !!:o

I don't suppose there is any chance that the 26th can be renamed -

"The Su Su Super-Cali-frigid-listic Snowstorm"

Duiske

Given the model differences at this range, you would have to say f1 is somewhere around 96hrs. Either a massive change in one of the models is coming in the next day or 2, or more likely, a meet in the middle situation as wolfie mentioed earlier.

cherryghost

GEM rolling out and upgraded since the 0Z. I said I would wait til the weekend to analyse the charts and the GFS is currently outnumbered 2-1 on the charts, only the JMA is on the fence at the moment.

Either way despite what the GFS is showing, there's still snowfall potential on it next weekend!

Irish Steve

M.T. Cranium wrote: »

By the way, I don't support any idea of a massive 1947 style pattern change lasting weeks and creating chaos, probably 2-3 weeks is about the most this spell would last before reverting back to milder weather.

Right................................Even the most addicted snow bunnys will be MORE than happy if something that long happens!


As for the rest of the country, we'll be well and truly up Sh1t creek without a paddle if it gets that bad for that long, while the local authorities have supposedly got a lot more salt that they had over the last 2 winters, it will still be pretty chaotic, they don't have the equipment to deal with cold snow, they are only really able to deal with small quantities of wet snow that can be pushed off the road with a blade clearer, things like snow blowers and 4 x 4 type vehicles that can get around in deep drifting stuff are generally not available to the snow clearers.

As I have to make a trip with a trailer on to the UK next week, what are your thoughts on the end of next week, is it likely to arrive before Thursday night, if it is, I might need to look at precautions that will keep me moving if it decides to cut up rough earlier than the present predictions are saying.

I am thinking that South Wales may be a safer option than North Wales if the weather is coming from the North, there's a lot of coastal uplift on the North coast of Wales, and the main road runs along the bottom of the hills, so could be "interesting", even in a 4 x 4.

Thanks

Steve

Calibos

OMG MT used the word 'ThunderSnow'!! Are the Sea Surface temperatures still cold enough in the middle of January to be condusive for Thundersnow levels of 'Explosive' convection. I understand thats why the Nov 2010 cold delivered in such a big way for the East Coast because the Irish sea was still reasonable warm after the Summer/Autumn. Are this years January SST's higher than normal?

I rust remembered another reason to be confident. I have family in Seattle. I have often joked on Facebook about how whenever my uncle posts about the weather, he always seems to be describing our weather here. ie. He'll be posting about the week of Torrential rain..It will have been raining here all the same week too. He'll post about gettin the barbie out because the weather is gorgeous...It'll have been gorgeous here during the same period. IIRC, Seattle which isn't renowned for regular snow either got the most they had in years...first week of January 2010/might even have been Nov 2010 !!! I've joked that he fooled us all and the Taxman too by making it look like he moved to Seattle when infact he is living in a shack up the Wicklow mountains because why else would his weather reports alwys be identical to here.

Anyway, hasn't MT just forecast Snow next week for Vancouver on the west coast of Canada. What major US city is only 100 miles down the coast on the same inlet???

SEATTLE !!

What I want to know MT, is have you accounted for this energy coupling between Bray and Seattle in your models...Hhhmmm??

hotwhiskey

Matthew Hugo @MattHugo81

Heres today's ECMWF 'sample' the ECM ENS for Reading. Despite the Det in particular being cold the ENS mean is decent!


I know its not for here but it's only across the water, EPS control keeping outlook cold the temp drops from 18 Jan from 12c to below -6 on 22Jan, precipitation a bit of a worry but again its not for here.

M.T. Cranium

Not sure if a serious answer was sought, but weather patterns between here and Seattle can be complicated by a convergence zone that runs across the north end of Puget Sound roughly in line with the north coast of the Olympic peninsula (or the south side of the Straits of Juan de Fuca).

Winter weather in this region is complicated by dynamics that you don't find on the same scale in western Europe, very strong outflow winds that howl out of the various valleys such as the Fraser River east of Vancouver, Howe Sound north of Vancouver, and to a lesser extent two or three river valleys in Washington state. You get some exceptionally strong outflow winds at times, 70-110 km/hr when other places are running just 20-40 or less.

Further north on the B.C. coast, there are a couple of places where outflow winds can reach 180 km/hr, and may do so this time, for example Cathedral Point near Bella Coola. These are just like the katabatic winds in Greenland or Antarctica, when we get a strong enough arctic high building up inland.

Anyway, you can tell your relations in Seattle to expect 5 to 10 inches of snow by mid-week, the first part of my snow discussion earlier would be sleet or rain south of the border, and possibly 2-3 feet in the local mountains. It should eventually get very cold there too but we sometimes have a very strong gradient with this set-up and it can run 10 degrees milder in Seattle than in Vancouver.

Sponge Bob

Calibos wrote: »

I have a Dilemma. The 26th of January was given to Su Campu in his absence. His absence means he cannot give permission to re-allocate it.

Its....its just...its just that....the 26th of January is my birthday !!:o

I have allocated the naming rights for the 26th to Su BUT in a fit of generosity the naming rights can now transfer to you under a newly stated sub condition.

Best I can do Calibos.

tylercollins

And the media have begun..

http://www.newswireni.com/content/weather-warning-polar-air-bring-ice-and-snow-next-week