TBH that might look dramatic but it doesn’t mean a whole lot for Ireland right now, it’s just a fairly typical image of the Atlantic in late autumn/early winter. The following shows that most of the rain is gone from Ireland for a few days now:
Just cleared the East:
Some not very heavy showery stuff, worst in the West and south 24 hours later:
High pressure ridge after 48 hours:
Has become part of the great European blocking high after 72 hours, extending a ridge westwards to Ireland:
Still in place at 120 hours, bringing mild, pleasant days, chilly nights inland, fog in places will be slow to clear:
By the limits of the reliable forecast, 144 hours/6 days, the European high is taking over even more, joining a ridge to Greenland & the mid-Atlantic:
In other circumstances this could’ve been a beast from the East but as stated in the previous post, that high has not engaged really cold air over middle Europe yet. So it’s a watered down, average continental airflow coming to Ireland, more chilly than before, but drier also/less humidity, so possibly bringing nice sunny days, frost at night away from the East and south coasts. Small chance it brings dull cold weather to the East and south…
It’s still a very unusual set-up for early winter, one of the very few times it has happened was Dec 1981, which eventually led to The Big Snow in Jan 82…
Here’s some charts at similar times to the above showing where the real cold is etc. Ireland virtually in the middle, orange is warm, green is average to mild, then colder as it goes through the blues from lighter to darker shades, pink is severe cold, and white and grey is stupidly cold:
At 144 Ireland has a chilly East airmass but low humidity and not a strong wind. Not enough cold or instability for snow on the East coast. The Tipp Dubs will be scraping the windscreens though:
The longer-range forecast, 10 days ahead, shows the possibility of a beast set-up becoming established. If this chart were to verify more or less, it would lead to a beast in Ireland by Day 12:
