Winter Weather 2016/17 - General Discussion

Clonmel1000

Great to see the brightness and feel the mildness this eve. Lots of people really happy to see it. That cold weather was horrible.

JCX BXC

Sunshine, mild and windless today, I thought it was a fine day in May!

PowerToWait

Gonzo wrote: »

I went to school in the 80s and early 90s and I too remember many winters where the primary school had to close due to frozen pipes. Many a time would I wake up and my bedroom window would be covered in a layer of ice with beautiful frosty patterns.

Same here. I seem to remember all our local lakes and bogs being frozen mostly every winter. It was just the norm, though maybe I'm imagining that. But I certainly remember many occasions of walking on very thickly iced up lakes.

Hard frosts were just par for the course. We would make 'slides' at our primary school, pouring water on the concrete and in the morning taking a run and slide for 30 feet. Good times.

Gonzo

PowerToWait wrote: »

Same here. I seem to remember all our local lakes and bogs being frozen mostly every winter. It was just the norm, though maybe I'm imagining that. But I certainly remember many occasions of walking on very thickly iced up lakes.

Hard frosts were just par for the course. We would make 'slides' at our primary school, pouring water on the concrete and in the morning taking a run and slide for 30 feet. Good times.

we made frozen water slides as well..

All this stuff the kids of today have no knowledge about as we seem to have very mild winters now almost guaranteed every winter with one snowy winter every 10 years if were lucky. We used to get at least 30 or 40 properly frosty nights back in the 80s and early 90s, now we are lucky if we get 5.

JCX BXC

Does anyone have any actual data to back this up?

Oscar Bravo

Line of intense showers directly south of Waterford ,unlikely to make it up though the boring weather continues.

sryanbruen

JCX BXC wrote: »

Does anyone have any actual data to back this up?

I'm trying to find actual Ireland data for you but it's proving to be difficult and will require me to do some re-analysis.

acequion

Clonmel1000 wrote: »

Great to see the brightness and feel the mildness this eve. Lots of people really happy to see it. That cold weather was horrible.

Funny how we all differ. I really loved that cold spell which, here in Kerry, lasted all of four days. Now it's back to boring mild :rolleyes:

It's the same in summer. We might get 3-4 ice cream days on the trot before it resets to default.

Oh to live in a country with real seasons!

pauldry

It was very mild in Iceland the past few days with 19c recorded in the East
.
Unless cooling reemerges in the coming years - which it could, the albedo effect of the oceans and melting ice in the Arctic will see higher temperatures for sure.

Theres usually one cold blast annually at start of March so im gearing up in the hope my 30 minute old snowman can be built that day before a rapidly melting death a couple of hours later when it hits 14c and stays that way every day till September...day and night

Contrary to Munster twas still a bleedn cold 7c in Sligo today with the keen wind only gone by evening

nacho libre

I do remember in the nineties there were some exceptionally mild winter months, but we still got some decent snowfalls from time to time- there did not seem to as long of a gap as we've experienced since 2010.

Gonzo

pauldry wrote: »

It was very mild in Iceland the past few days with 19c recorded in the East

that's amazing, just checked and 17C was widely reported across many eastern areas of Iceland and that 19C was reached in the mountains of all places. Much of Ireland struggles to reach that in the height of summer.

Meteorite58

I enjoyed today's weather very much , I was out and about in and out of cars and buildings and got so warm at one stage had to take of my jacket and roll up the sleeves ! After the early morning cloudy condition's it cleared up to a ( I'll whisper it :pac: ) bright sunny Spring like day.

Got up to 14.1C ( had to check other stations for accuracy and see Shannon got 13.5C . We definitely get a fohn effect here in the lee of the Slieve Mish mountains when we get a steady SE'ly )

Currently a mild 9.3C

Bit of rain a short time ago.

highdef

met Eirean sites generally reporting mid to high single digit temperatures at midnight. near Enfield, I'm at 1.3° and there's a decent frost out there

Graces7

Yesterday I sat outside in sun that had real warmth in it.. Lovely!

Clonmel1000

Very intense showers there about an hour ago. Seems calm out now though.

Gonzo

downpour here now, mild wet muck, yesterday was similar, very wet at times after the bitterly cold and wet conditions of the weekend making the past 7 days possibly the most unsettled and miserable part of winter here so far. Wouldn't mind a few weeks of settled conditions.

sryanbruen

Gonzo wrote: »

downpour here now, mild wet muck, yesterday was similar, very wet at times after the bitterly cold and wet conditions of the weekend making the past 7 days possibly the most unsettled and miserable part of winter here so far. Wouldn't mind a few weeks of settled conditions.

Fine here yesterday and today with just 0.1mm during both mornings.

h7nlrp2v0g5u48

Gonzo wrote: »

I went to school in the 80s and early 90s and I too remember many winters where the primary school had to close due to frozen pipes. Many a time would I wake up and my bedroom window would be covered in a layer of ice with beautiful frosty patterns. Most winters brought a snow spell anything from one to three days (this was normal so can't really remember which years) and up to 1-3 weeks during 1982, 1987 and 1991. I also remember school closures in 1986 I think it was during April with one night of intense snow leaving almost a foot of snow here.

If you take 2000, 2009 and 2010 out of the equation think back between 1992 and this winter and for most winter's I can count on one hand the amount of days per winter we experienced an average frost. Also, any snow that does fall is now mostly just a glimse from a rogue shower at night from the north-west, with any lying snow melted within 1 or 3 hours. As for school days lost due to frozen pipes or snow since 2010 in our location, that number is currently at 0 and kids currently in 4th class primary school have never experienced a day off from school due to bad weather/snow/ice/frost.

like you I remember most of what you posted above but it's amazing to think for me anyway that my teenage children have never experienced a Winter that had more snow days than mild ones. I would have loved for them to have experienced the excitement of three or four days of an Artic or Siberian blast from the North or East. I know 2010 was a bitterly cold one but we didn't get much snow just a few flurries but temps were minus 10. 1982 was the best one for me as I remember it snowed from Saturday evening all day Sunday and stopped Monday afternoon. I don't think I wll ever see a winter like that again in my life time. Hopefully I'm proved wrong.

sryanbruen

I still don't have data on Ireland which is very unfortunate , my god this is proving to be a big challenge.

I can only really speak from summary wise at the moment and I remember many different cold spells since the 1980s with these months coming to my mind straight off the bat

• January 1987
• January 1985
• February 1986
• January 1982
• December 1981
• December 2010
• January 2010
• November 2010
• March 2013
• December 1995
• February 1991
• December 1996
• March 2001
• December 2000
• November 1996
• November 1985

Many of you might have forgotten some of these months (especially November & December 1996 and March 2001). I'm only 16 so I unfortunately didn't get to experience many of these months but I have plenty of weather history to help me get to know what the weather was like then.

When we think of cold months, we normally think of recent cold months like March 2013 or December 2010 OR months that were severe cold at some point like January 1987 but somehow, we still don't think of months like November 1985 or February 1986.

In my opinion, February 1986 should be talked about more often. It's probably not talked about often because of the lack of snow and that is what interests many weather enthusiasts. Fortunately, any weather attracts me. February 1986 was the last month before December 2010 with a mean of less than 0c in England, which in Professor Trevor Harley's terms is a very severe cold month. The gap from February 1986 to December 2010 was 298 months which simplifies to 24 years and 8 months. Before February 1986, the previous severe cold month in England was January 1979 in which there was a gap of 6 years and 1 month. So

February 1986-December 2010: 24 years and 8 months
January 1979-February 1986: 6 years and 1 month

The previous very severe cold month before by the way was January 1963 but you know by just looking at the month that the gap wasn't as big as February 1986-December 2010 was. Something clearly has happened here.

Gonzo

sryanbruen wrote: »

I still don't have data on Ireland which is very unfortunate , my god this is proving to be a big challenge.

I can only really speak from summary wise at the moment and I remember many different cold spells since the 1980s with these months coming to my mind straight off the bat

• January 1987
• January 1985
• February 1986
• January 1982
• December 1981
• December 2010
• January 2010
• November 2010
• March 2013
• December 1995
• February 1991
• December 1996
• March 2001
• December 2000
• November 1996
• November 1985

The above list gives a very good snapshot of how good the 1980s were for cold and snow. As a child I thought this was perfectly normal I wouldn't get excited unless there was at least 3 inchs of snow on the ground, meaning time off school and that happened almost annually sometimes several times in one winter.

In the above list i'd almost disregard March 2013, while it did snow it was too little too late and melted every day by noon only to be replaced again each night and repeat for about a week. The 1996 event from memory did not happen in my area, possibly it was the IOM shadow but Dublin got plastered and we didn't even see any snizzle here. 1991 was the final swansong for regular snowy winters, my next decent blast of snow wasn't till December 2000 then another 9 year wait till 2009.

Rougies

Some might find this interesting.

The aim is to illuminate fundamental properties of wind flow over complex terrain, to help researchers improve atmospheric computer models and enable engineers to decide where to put wind turbines to get the most energy from them.

http://www.nature.com/news/world-s-largest-wind-mapping-project-spins-up-in-portugal-1.21481

Supercell

00Z GFS looks very mild for Sunday in the East, i'd say areas to the lee side of the Wicklow mountains could get quite springlike temperatures up to 16 or 17C possibly - could be a weekend for grass cutting!

Graces7

Heavy loud deluges here.. MT mentions light showers? West Co Galway

Clonmel1000

Spilling rain here all morning

h7nlrp2v0g5u48

Mild and wet here in Tipp at the moment temps around 11c. As normal once the southwesterly sets in it more or less stays brining in mild air and staying more or less for the Summer.

Gonzo

wet day here again

Doctor Shivering

Trying to rain here in S Wicklow but failing
9.2c
Yesterday it was 2 degrees warmer

I'm expecting a cold spring

RD10

mild with showers in mayo.

Graces7

Rather lovely out there, in between deluges.

Pottered around the "estate" with the dog and sat on a rock watching the stream that feeds the cottage's water supply rollicking down the heights at the back... and at all the other streams in the clefts in the mountains on three sides.

Knowing we will have water ....

Mild and rather lovely.... then the clouds drape the rocks, the mountains vanish, and the rain starts again..

sryanbruen

Awful day with very annoying little spots of rain adding up to 1.1mm so far.