Rain Gone Forever?

Where is all of the rain gone? This is perhaps the most dangerous question you can ask in Ireland. What usually follows is deluges and floods. It looks like there will be a significant spell of wet weather in February for a time but whether it will bring a month of above average rainfall is open to question.

The months of November, December and January have been very dry compared to normal with rainfall of only about 60% of what is expected. The figure for Sligo is 281mm of rain at present. Normal for the 3 months here would be over 420mm.

High pressure remains in place until February and then it slowly slips away allowing the Atlantic to exert an influence. What it could mean with the rain is some milder Southwesterlies so at last you will be able to turn that heating down.

Blocking High

The end of January has seen a lot of very quite and cold and sometimes frosty weather. It has not been nearly as severe as what we experienced in December but the temperature has still dipped to minus 7c. The coming few weeks see a cold pattern continuing up to the first week of February before the Atlantic once more tries to make inroads but it is too early to say yet how this will pan out. Overall models signal a low overall rainfall pattern for February continuing the drier than normal Winter theme. Since November 1st there has been 280mm of rain in Sligo whereas in a normal mild 3 month period this figure would be closer to 400mm. There has also been 41 days of frost while in some Winters there was only 10 to 20 days.

Image from http://www.wetterzentrale.de/ shows the blocking high that is currently situated over us.

Return of the Atlantic Weather

After such a long period of cold icy weather it makes us forget that our weather is normally so Atlantic dominated. During much of the year 2009 there was rain non stop and it is only in the past year that things have been drier than normal. Of course we have had some wet months in the last 12 like September and July of course but overall we have enjoyed many dryier than normal months of late.

This would seem to suggest that the Atlantic weather is not going to last and this would appear to be backed up by some of the models that are predicting a return to some cold weather by January 20th. This depends on a couple of Low Pressures and the Jet Stream but at the moment a cold spell looks like happening here. However it is going to be nothing like December and will probably just bring ice and wintry showers like the North and West of Ireland saw on January 8th and 9th.