Winter Storms Cause Havoc

Some extremely stormy weather hit Ireland on January 3rd 2012 with a gust of 91knots recorded at Malin Head courtesy of Met Eireann. Sligo saw winds in excess of 65 miles per hour bringing down power lines in areas like Geevagh and Cliffoney and leaving a lot of homes in these areas without power.


Met Eireann have said that it was the windiest spell of weather since the storm of Stephens Day in 1998.


Over 1800 homes were still without power 24 hours after the storm hit but the ESB are working hard to restore power to these areas mainly along the Atlantic Seaboard.

Birds struggled in the High Winds

What is in the forecast for the coming few days well initially it continues windy and wet but towards the end of the week it will get a lot calmer and much milder as temperatures reach 11 or 12c and High Pressure builds to the South of Ireland and this will bring a lot more settled weather for most of the middle part of January.

No White Christmas

Unfortunately the forecast does not point toward a white Christmas this year as there is a High Pressure in the mild Atlantic Ocean that wants to visit Irelands shores for the festive season.

Temperatures are in fact going to be very mild making it a totally different scenario to what we experienced in last years Big Freeze when the temperature on Christmas morning was a lowly minus 17c.

Though the Christmas is not going to be white the long range forecast is looking at some cooler weather coming in for the New Year and some of the not so reliable long range models have some bitterly cold weather setting in for January 2012.

To Snow or not to Snow

That is the Question. Whether it is nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of mild weather or by opposing get cold weather to end them.


Certainly a colder feel to the weather for the coming weeks with a lot of showery weather where the showers will be wintry with sleet and hail with the odd one of snow


Temperatures for the next 10 days will be 6 to 9c.

Unsettled Times Ahead

Rather Mild weather has been dominating November so far with the temperature reaching the dizzy heights of 17.3c in Valentia Observatory and also getting above 16c in Belmullet on Sunday 13th November 2011. Just what is causing this unseasonably mild weather. Hell it is looking as if it is going to be the mildest November on record in a good number of locations around Ireland and this is even if we do get the expected cooler weather toward the end of the month.


1994 was indeed a very mild November in Ireland also with the mean temperature in the North of Ireland of near 9c while it got over 10c in parts of the South. But while a lot of that year saw mild wet and windy weather November 2011 has been quite different with a predominately Southeasterly flow steering up warm winds from the continent.


Now the weather is going to stay mild for the next 10 days but there will be some subtle changes. The first one is that it will be a lot wetter. Some stations like Claremorris and Finner Camp have only seen 10 to 20% of their normal rainfall for the month of November so far. This figure will bulk up so that by the end of the month it will be near normal again. As well as being wetter the weather is going to slowly get a little cooler from the North with temperatures dipping into high single figures by day around the end of the month.


How this is going to impact the Christmas weather is hard to say but what is certain is that by the time December comes we will be due a spell of cold weather so I wouldnt rule out some spells of frost at least if the Atlantic loosens its grip.

A Drier November?

It does look a lot drier in general for November after a wet start. High Pressure will be always nearby and there will be some frosty nights. Nothing too severe.


There will therefore be a lot of sunshine and rainfall should be below average. There will be breakdowns in this pattern at times and as the High slips south toward the end of the month a cooler Northerly or Northwesterly could bring the first wintry showers of the season.


This however will be short-lived and will be replaced by milder weather as we head into December.

Cool Weather in General

Although the weather in recent weeks has been very mild for the start of October both in Ireland and the UK, it is set to get cooler in the coming few weeks with a lot of rain and some wintry showers at times. Snow is not likely except on the highest peaks but it will be a good deal cooler.

What is the cause of this? Well for nearly all of 2011 the weather pattern has been coming from the Atlantic and in the last few months in particular it has been coming from the Northwest. This resulted in a very cool June and August.

Again we are looking at a continuation of this weather pattern in the coming few weeks with a lot of windy weather to go along with it so it will feel very seasonal though perhaps too early for any snow lovers to take out the skis.

Take it that temperatures are now going to be below normal or at average and rainfall will be above average especially along the already soaked Atlantic seaboard.