October Ends Windy and November??

Previously on weathergossip blog... "a lot of strong winds in October". It did not really materialize did it. But as is oft the case with the weather in October it ends with a storm in a sandwich just like it is today, October 28th.

Back to the weather the gales and wind that are around at present look like they will continue until the end of the month and some steady rainfall totals look like falling especially in Munster and Leinster. Upward of 50mm could fall between Friday and Sunday in some parts of the East and Southeast. The Western half of the country and Sligo look like escaping for a change.

Whatever will November bring after all of this wind and rain. Well at the moment a lot more of the same looks to be the answer. Is it too early to say if the weather is going to be stuck in a mild windy and wet pattern for the Winter? Maybe this is going to be the case but the is Low confidence that a blocker of a High will try to push in around November 10th and should this intensify we could get frosty nights similar to last Winter for a while.

Credit must be given to some weather websites that I refer to and use namely http://www.met.ie/ and http://www.wetterzentrale.de/ These 2 sites provide us with a lot of the data we have on weathergossip.

October Winds

Certainly it looks like this October is going to be bringing a lot of wind and rain for the first 10 days at least. Temperatures will be on the mild side of normal too as the wind will be from a more Southerly direction. Night time frosts will not be a problem at all. High wind gusts are a low to moderate risk at present.

There is a series of Low Pressure systems that are gathering energy over the Atlantic ocean and will be passing between Iceland and Ireland bringing a lot of strong winds to both countries. This is a normal scenario for the early days of October but expect a lot of debris and leaves on the road. The debris will be mainly in the form of broken branches from trees.

As the month goes on expect things to quiten down somewhat but it will still be on the unsettled side. A monthly temperature for October of about 1degree ABOVE normal is predicted this year for Ireland by weathergossip. Rainfall will also be ABOVE the norm and Sunshine slightly BELOW.

Warm September 2010

Its turned out to be a very warm September overall with temperatures of 1.5c above normal in most parts of the country so far. Again the nights continue to be very warm or mild with temperatures rarely going below 10c.


The Long Range Forecast is predicting a mild end to the month after a brief cold spell on the weekend of September 24th. It would seem that it will turn out  to be one of the warmer Septembers on record though a wet one too.

Unsettled Weather on Way

The Long Range Weather Forecast is predicting a LOT of rain for Ireland over the coming weeks and it will be quite windy at times also. After such a gloriously sunny start to the month of September things will rapidly go downhill weatherwise.

Rainfall for the next few weeks is going to be well above normal and though frost does not look like being a problem in the medium term the temperatures are going to drop back somewhat. Highs of 18c is the best that can be expected and Lows of 9c.

Late on in the month of September would be the next window of opportunity for any good weather but it appears that Summer is now a distant memory.

Summer Review 2010

Summer of 2010 was by no means a scorcher but we did have periods of good and bad weather. The month of June was mainly warm dry and sunny especially in the West of the country. July turned out to be by far the wettest month of the Summer touching record wetness in some places and August brought a return of sunshine but not as warm as June, though the Northern half of the country had a lot more rain than those in the South.


Temperatures for the Summer have been above normal in general, very warm in June when it was 1 to 1.5c warmer than normal, just above normal for July when the temperature was 0.5 to 0.8c above normal, whereas in August the temperature has been normal or slightly below even with the return of some very cool or even cold nights. The highest temperature of the Summer wasnt even in the Summer and happened in May when 26.1c was recorded in Mount Dillon in Roscommon on the last Sunday of the month.

Rainfall has been below normal this Summer for the most part although some massive downpours in July have brought the figure up considerably especially in the West and Northwest. June was very dry all over Ireland with below normal rainfall and the land being particularly parched in the West and Southwest where the threat of a hosepipe ban was put in place in Clare at the end of June. However July brought about a change to all this when some thundery rain fell, especially around the middle of the month when Claremorris Co Mayo saw a fall of 56mm in one day. This was its biggest daily fall of rain in July on record. The country as a whole had rainfall in excess of 200 percent of the normal that would be expected for the month of July. August started off on a wet note too especially in the West and North but it has become drier and rainfall for the country as a whole has been around 50% of the normal. This also means that 7 of the 8 months in 2010 have been near to or drier than normal.

Sunshine this Summer has been well above normal, especially in the South. People in Sligo and the Northwest may disagree though and Malin Head had its dullest July since 1919. While it was dull in the North and West after a sunny June, the South of Ireland saw a lot more sunshine and sunshine figures here for the Summer have been over 150% of the normal as opposed to just above the normal for the Northern half of Ireland. This data is based on the prediction that the last day of Summer will be a mostly sunny one.

Summer's End?

So is this now the end of the Summer. After a day of some heavy blustery showers and cool temperatures it sure felt like it. The coming week continues the showery them but the long range weather is predicting some dry and fine weather for the end of the Summer. This is some distance off and is open to change but at present the end of August and beginning of September are looking quite promising with temperatures of around 20 degrees. A review of Summer 2010 will appear here at the end of August.