Winter 2017-18: Discussion

h7nlrp2v0g5u48

MJohnston wrote: »

Oops

sryanbruen

Gonzo wrote: »

the thing I remember about last November was all the cold and proper frost, I think we even had an ice day?, for a while it looked like we were really setting up for a decent December and we were all starting to get very excited, then the mild south-westerlies took over first week of December and that was it for last winter.

I think I can count the number of times I saw frost after December 1st on one hand, we also got a very brief dusting of snow from a shower at some point. February was a horrible month from what I remember too, lots of rain after a very long relatively dry and settled period.

I think that the brief dusting of snow you're referring to is 12 January - I failed to record any snow from that.

And yes, December 1st was very frosty across the board with many getting down to -3 or -4c. Then December 7th.... 15c at Phoenix Park .

You know how much I hate February 2017, how dreadful it was here in the east.

sryanbruen

nagdefy wrote: »

Wow! How have some of us forgotten so quickly... Crazy.. We must have been full of hope for winter this time last year

We were indeed very hopeful, including myself. I was going for quite significant cold in parts of December and January in my forecasts - helped by the models which I've learned not to trust :P. However, I always went for a miserably mild and wet February.... at least I got one part of last Winter right :pac:. I did not dislike Winter 2016/17 - besides February - but without a doubt, it was a huge disappointment. Part of that is to blame on myself obviously for getting a bit too excited for it.

h7nlrp2v0g5u48

Turning cold Thursday and for the the weekend with scattered showers and frosty nights after a cold front pushes through Wednesday night. Winds will be northwest in direction but no mention of snow in the weekend forecast according to the Six One Weather.

Buffalobill29

Looking faint for a cold winter again I see, ah sure we might get one in another 10 years.

sryanbruen

Buffalobill29 wrote: »

Looking faint for a cold winter again I see, ah sure we might get one in another 10 years.

Where are you seeing this?

Buffalobill29

sryanbruen wrote: »

Where are you seeing this?

Well, from what other posters are saying that November last year was very similar to this year and the fact that winters are usually mild in the last 6 years, it seem that it will be the same this year will it not?

sryanbruen

Buffalobill29 wrote: »

Well, from what other posters are saying that November last year was very similar to this year and the fact that winters are usually mild in the last 6 years, it seem that it will be the same this year will it not?

Nature does not work like that, at all. Can't just say, oh frosty in November, mild Winter ahead. Never jump to conclusions with weather.

PokeHerKing

Buffalobill29 wrote:

Well, from what other posters are saying that November last year was very similar to this year and the fact that winters are usually mild in the last 6 years, it seem that it will be the same this year will it not?

Odds are it will but we live in hope!

Reckless Abandonment

November 2016 was very calm to if I remember right. Some lovely colours on the trees. Most of the trees still had loads of leaves on them.

h7nlrp2v0g5u48

Buffalobill29 wrote: »

Looking faint for a cold winter again I see, ah sure we might get one in another 10 years.

I wouln'd go as far as to say that at the moment as i'm sure you well know they weather here in Ireland can throw up some surprises so fingers crossed we hit the jackpot as far as snow is concerned.

Buffalobill29

PokeHerKing wrote: »

Odds are it will but we live in hope!

Well hope is okay, but it's not adequate.

Floki

Buffalobill29 wrote: »

Looking faint for a cold winter again I see, ah sure we might get one in another 10 years.

And that my friends was the catylst for Ireland's 5 year little ice age.:p

Bit pointless writing off winter when we're still in Autumn.:)

The omens ( woooohh ) are still looking favourable.
What do you need?
A borderline la Nina just off neutral? It may go back up towards neutral during the winter.
Sleepy tired Sun. It's fairly sleepy atm.

Sryan and others will/have posted about AO and QBO and even shorter forecasting with MJO etc.etc.

We're certainly not in a raging El Nino wet winter anyway powered by a strong Sun.
But we still could get strong storms from la Nina but "usually" these head for Iceland.

Not throwing in the towel yet anyway!
That's weather watching.

BLIZZARD7

All good points @Syanbruen

The models continue to be all over the place and this evenings ECM, whilst cold, is quite a different evolution to this mornings run and so confidence can't be high in its output. Either way though, there's not much support for sustained mild weather any time soon, we're looking at a deeply negative AO and moderate -NAO.

ECM looking quite nice @ +192hrs this evening

Donegal Storm

Yeah the models are still showing a cool down from Thursday, certainly nothing on 2010 levels but frosty mornings and cold days look likely. A very messy picture though so hard to see how it'll evolve yet

Gonzo

sryanbruen wrote: »

Nature does not work like that, at all. Can't just say, oh frosty in November, mild Winter ahead. Never jump to conclusions with weather.

very true, the majority of cold snowy periods that I can remember since the early 1980's all occurred between St. Stephen's Day and the end of March. November/December 2010 is one of the very few exceptions where I can actually remember proper lying snow before Christmas.

sryanbruen

Donegal Storm wrote: »

Yeah the models are still showing a cool down from Thursday, certainly nothing on 2010 levels but frosty mornings and cold days look likely. A very messy picture though so hard to see how it'll evolve yet

Which is more than good enough for me, especially with sun.

Water John

Gritters were out last night on the M8. Thought it was a bit OTT. Do they auto go out now when the temp hits 3C? Private contractor.

nagdefy

Buffalobill29 wrote: »

Looking faint for a cold winter again I see, ah sure we might get one in another 10 years.

It's the 14th November. A little early to decide one way or another

During mid May 1995 it was pretty cool, no one would have guessed summer 1995 would be record breaking.

George Sunsnow

As ever it's ridiculous to call winter based on models now,today the 12th of November or is it the 14th...
Forecasters who use models,who are paid to use them struggle with 4 days ahead a lot of the time
The science of Nina is as certain about red balloons as it is about the chaos of weather
Let's see where the balls land,they'll be thrown many times

sryanbruen

nagdefy wrote: »

It's the 14th November. A little early to decide one way or another

During mid May 1995 it was pretty cool, no one would have guessed summer 1995 would be record breaking.

Or in June 2013 when UKMO scientists had a chat together on if the UK would ever warm up since they had 5 consecutive colder than average months and it looked like June would continue.... then July 2013 heatwave happened :rolleyes:.

Floki

nagdefy wrote: »

It's the 14th November. A little early to decide one way or another

During mid May 1995 it was pretty cool, no one would have guessed summer 1995 would be record breaking.

If you wanted to be cheeky you could say the 1995 summer was caused by the ENSO index gradually moving upwards and keeping pace (or in proportion) with the increase in temperature in the north American continent and thus not much impetus for a weather system or wind to develop keeping the situation downstream
stagnant over us.

Being cheeky again you could say we very nearly went to that situation again this year in early summer only for ENSO went back down again. But imo we very nearly had a 95 event this year if ENSO had of kept increasing slowly (like it was forecast to do).
Just my opinion though.

nagdefy

Floki wrote: »

If you wanted to be cheeky you could say the 1995 summer was caused by the ENSO index gradually moving upwards and keeping pace (or in proportion) with the increase in temperature in the north American continent and thus not much impetus for a weather system or wind to develop keeping the situation downstream
stagnant over us.

Being cheeky again you could say we very nearly went to that situation again this year in early summer only for ENSO went back down again. But imo we very nearly had a 95 event this year if ENSO had of kept increasing slowly (like it was forecast to do).
Just my opinion though.

No i merely wanted to point out that writing off a summer, for dry weather and heat, in the last month of Spring or writing off a winter, for cold and potential snow, in the last month of Autumn is generally not a wise thing to do.

I look on these events from a historical point of view as my scientific knowledge wouldn't be as strong as other posters.

I wasn't being cheeky with Buffalobill29. I don't do cheeky:)

fraxinus1

Oh great. I return to boards after being away from it for a few weeks and I'm meet with the news that there will be no snow this Winter. Another load of mild muck for us. Oh well I might log back on for the Christmas just to be festive.

JCX BXC

Even for the weekend coming, ME have changed their outlook from cooler than normal, to normal and now back to cooler than normal. Even with their resources it's quite hard to predict what's happening at the moment!

sryanbruen

fraxinus1 wrote: »

Oh great. I return to boards after being away from it for a few weeks and I'm meet with the news that there will be no snow this Winter. Another load of mild muck for us. Oh well I might log back on for the Christmas just to be festive.

Ah would ya stop. Never once have I mentioned the word snow in my forecasts here. I've never said if there's a chance or not. Why? Here's why which I must update sometime:

https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=105178582&postcount=5

I am trying to stay away from mentioning that word for reasons stated in that link.

Gonzo

fraxinus1 wrote: »

Oh great. I return to boards after being away from it for a few weeks and I'm meet with the news that there will be no snow this Winter. Another load of mild muck for us. Oh well I might log back on for the Christmas just to be festive.

nobody knows what's going to happen beyond the next 1-2 weeks, Winter hasn't started yet, it can snow anytime between now and April. November rarely see's proper lying snow. The Roller-coaster is still going through safety checks and doesn't open for another week or two!.

JCX BXC

fraxinus1 wrote: »

Oh great. I return to boards after being away from it for a few weeks and I'm meet with the news that there will be no snow this Winter. Another load of mild muck for us. Oh well I might log back on for the Christmas just to be festive.

Ah Fraxinus,

This is the stuff we want to avoid, nowhere has anyone said it's mild muck, FAR from it. It would be somewhat appreciative if you read the thread a little bit more instead of being so pessimistic.

Even if we were to have a repeat of 2010, we'd always have some doubt in the charts. They're not the gospel by any means, so don't take it with such a poor heart!

M.T. Cranium

So about that idea of mine to crunch the numbers of past winters (pressure data) and test out the findings of Oneiric3 over a longer period of time -- I now see that the wetterzentrale archives (from NOAA) have been improved in two ways. One is that they now go back 20 years further to 1851. The other is that they have maps for every six hours and also a hover feature on the display that makes it a lot faster to inspect the maps and record the numbers.

Anyway, I can report that I have started the data file, choosing Dublin as my location (I am quite sure it would not matter to the analysis what location we choose), and I have recorded the data from Jan 1 to Mar 15 1851 as well as from Nov 16 1851 to Mar 15 1852, so that's two winters down, 128 to go to reach the start of Oneiric's 1981-2010 analysis. I would probably keep going so I had the same data for 1981-2016. But I am sure it will look almost identical, an average of five locations in central Ireland is going to have almost the same pressure as Dublin every single data point.

What I noted so far, too early to see any trends of course, is that there were some strong lows passing to the north at the expected times from my own earlier reported research (Dec-Jan full and new moons) and that the winter of 1851-52 must have been tedious for anyone interested in the weather back then, it looks almost devoid of interesting events of any kind. The pressure rose quite high for most of late Feb and early March 1852 so probably some sharp frosts each morning. The winter itself looks bland with a weak zonal flow most of the time.

I chose Nov 16 to Mar 15 rather than just Dec-Jan-Feb so that I would have enough "sidebar" data to get three full lunar cycles out of each winter. When I test that part, I will line up the data by lunar dates but I will also test Oneiric's calendar year findings. It's going to take a few weeks at a minimum, especially as I am busy moving out of here and into our new location. When I have the first 30 years done we can start to talk about trends uncovered.

I scanned through winter 1852-53 to see what that looked like, and Feb 1853 looks like it could have been quite a snowy month in Ireland, if anyone has any way to check for evidence of that, have a look (mostly Feb, the good synoptics started in late Jan and lasted into early March too). A lot of cold easterly winds with lows south of Ireland, no nasty warming of oceans back then, surprised I haven't encountered tales about the winter of 1853. Feb 1853 in the CET record was 18th coldest (0.6 C).

Anyway, with the new maps posted, I had my first chance to see a few notable weather events of those two decades, for example Toronto had its highest pressure in a long period of record in Jan 1866 and while Toronto is a bit off the map grid you can see a closed 1055 mb high extending into Quebec (Jan 8 1866). Also some of the synoptics of the very heavy snowfall month of March 1870 in eastern Canada, as you'd expect, a storm track from PA to south of NS.

If you want to see these maps, go to wetterzentrale.de and click on archives, then NOAA in the drop down menus, and choose the dates you want to see. You have to be careful that it doesn't revert to the recent default date in 2014 when you move around from map to map.

If anyone wants to record any winters between my early start and 1981, and send me the data in an excel file, I'll let you know how I am recording the data. This could give us some answers earlier than I will be able to achieve solo.

nagdefy

fraxinus1 wrote: »

Oh great. I return to boards after being away from it for a few weeks and I'm meet with the news that there will be no snow this Winter. Another load of mild muck for us. Oh well I might log back on for the Christmas just to be festive.

No one knows what's going to happen this winter yet. You told us on the Ophelia thread you are a retired gentleman. After seeing many winters i'm sure you know anything can happen yet.