Very wet May on the cards

A look at the long range weather models show that May is going to be a very wet month. But lets not panic yet. We were expecting that but hopefully at month end and into June things will improve somewhat. However it does look like the South and West of Ireland will see their wettest May in many years.

So far in Cork they have already had over a months worth of rain and though places like Sligo, Galway and Castlebar have been drier so far this is about to change as the wind shifts to a more Westerly stream.

The East should end up with a May of normal or just above normal rainfall but overall the temperatures are going to cool down significantly too for the rest of the month making it feel quite Autumnal at times!!! Just look forward to June I'd advise.

Widespread Gorse Fires

Gorse Fire burns in the distance in Sligo

A Bank Holiday weekend that saw some of the worst gorse fires to hit Ireland in many years. More especially in the Northwest and Donegal there was acres of gorse burnt. The cause of this was the Southeastery winds which panned the flames. Also there has been alleged arson too. The army was deployed to deal with the fires and most are under control but there are still one or two in Sligo, Leitrim and Offaly.

As the week goes on the weather is expected to become very wet and windy so this problem will be a thing of the past. Temperatures are expected to drop back to seasonal values or below as rainfall increases. The whole month of May is expected to be a lot wetter and cooler than March or April were when the weather was very dry indeed.

Winds are also going to be strong for the next 10 day in Ireland. This will be a change from the near calm conditions that Ireland has enjoyed in 2011 so far.

Dry Weather is continuing

The Dry weather is continuing and indeed the dry trend for 2011 has continued also. Ireland saw a little bit of heavy rain at the start of April and also in February but there has been an awful lot of dry weather this year.

As has been previously discussed here the past 3 or 4 years have followed a similar pattern to this one and have usually ended in May or June turning wetter and this has been followed by long periods of rain and thundery weather.

This year though long range predictions have weaker energy coming from the Atlantic and are just showing a short breakdown for May in the weather. After this June and July are looking like they will bring a recovery in temperatures and weather conditions but the weathergossip  2011 Summer weather forecast which will be published at the end of this week will confirm all.

Warmth continues

Sunny April 2011

The April 2011 warmth has continued and the month is on course to be near enough the record temperature on average ever experienced in Ireland for April. Every day since April 1st has seen quite high values to when the month is looked at as a whole it will be very hard to beat in the future.

Or so it would seem. It depends on many factors and the final week could go a long way to telling if April 2011 is going to be a record breaker. Finally a sneak preview of May suggests a cooler period of weather with quite a degree more wet weather on the horizon by then

Then if we look further ahead to the Summer of 2011 the weather still looks like it will be warm a lot of the time and there will be many periods of good weather overall.

April Dry Weather

Dry trends in the Long Range Models now for April with High becoming established for the rest of the month and in to May. Not certain if a cooler trend will establish then with Low Pressure. What is certain is that temperatures on average through April will be near record values.

April Record Average Temperature

It now looks highly likely that the average temperature for this month will be close to a record for the month for Ireland. Perhaps even above 11c. The normal is 8c. So a 3c deviation is quite a lot. more to follow...