FI Charts ( T120+ onwards) Winter 2023/2024 **READ MOD NOTE IN FIRST

Ireland is a mild country and will always be but we do get some short lived cold weather like what we have right now and some very warm to hot conditions at times in the summer. This thread is for looking towards trends that break us out of the monotony of the Atlantic conveyer belt which dominates our weather most of the year. We look for cold spells in the winter, heat plumes and high pressure dominated weather during the Summer as well as storms any time of the year. We also look for drying trends when we get to the point where we can't take any more rain. The majority of stuff in this thread rarely verifies because it goes up to 3 weeks out, sometimes more looking but we mainly look for trends and pattern changes.

yeah I think if we are to get a Scandi High the main worries would be getting the high up north enough otherwise the easterly dives southeastwards into France/Spain and misses Ireland completely or too far north and we get the Atlantic back, then there is the heights over southern Europe to worry about also as well as those deep areas of low pressure over Canada would just flatten things off before it even gets to us. So much can go wrong but nothing to worry about as we don't yet have a trend appearing, just a couple of outliers.

The Atlantic is back in business after a 2 week vacation. That's an incredibly zonal signal up to January 27th that looks locked in up to that point. Mostly mild or very mild but some cooler interludes which are very brief and not all that cold either so a mild signal overall for the next 10 days. After that from January 28th there is a huge amount of scatter and I've a feeling this scatter will grow over the coming week with colder ensemble members appearing giving rise to huge uncertainty for the final days of January and opening week of February.

Looks unsettled but not overly wet and there are signs of high pressure setting up towards the end of the month which could settle things down again. As for the next cold spell well there is no real signal here other than a few rogue outliers with the overall trend staying warmer than average. This could begin to change over the coming week to 10 days.

At the moment the models looks fairly bleak if your looking for cold and snow. This zonal pattern looks a bit of a prolonged yawnfest and could last into the first week of February or possibly beyond. After all the ups and downs after spending 3 weeks chasing a cold snap with no snow for most of the country, now seems like a good time to take a little break from model watching and let this zonality play out.

At the moment it looks like high pressure could take up position close to us at some stage over the next few weeks which could deliver the very familiar winter pattern with high pressure to our south much of the time and any shots of real cold plunging into eastern Europe and Greece in particular.

I don't feel as confident about February as I did a few weeks ago but we shall see what happens over the next few weeks. Hopefully by this time next week the models will be on to something to give us one last shot of hope to save winter. If we are still starring at zonal charts by second week of February with just a few cold outliers 10 days out i'll be throwing in the towel again for another winter, after which i'll begin concentrating on the late Spring and summer period.

just took a look at the EC46 and it's not looking particularly good for us and quite different to when I last looked at it about a week ago. For ages it was showing very strong blocking over Greenland but that is now downgraded massively for February. Next 2 weeks has low pressure over Greenland, hight pressure over southern Europe which will try to make a move over the UK and Ireland. At times it may drift out towards the Atlantic and little bit further to our north-west but never fully gets to Greenland. Heights over Spain/Portugal and Italy etc remain in place throughout February and heights often very close to us also so a lot of dry weather can be expected once we get the next week out of the way

In terms of blocking the EC wants to bring blocking back for February but not in a position that favours us, it favours the United States, Canada and parts of Asia. If all this was to verify and usually it doesn't, the best we can hope for is some dry settled weather in February with high pressure anchored over us with inversion giving us frost and fog despite relatively high upper air temperatures.

In terms of an easterly I think it could be sometime in March before we see one of those if at all, hope I'm wrong.

The above graph by the ECM shows blocking has completely vanished into space since yesterday and a very positive NAO will be in affect over the next week. The trend is for blocking to start re-emerging in the final days of January but there is a higher chance that the NAO will stay positive than go negative. Chances of a negative NAO look slim at best with a small chance of that around mid February. To me this suggests overall we will be on the mild side of the block for much of February. Just over a week ago this was screaming major negative NAO in February with massive heights over Greenland throughout February, this idea has unfortunately fallen apart for now.