Everyone wants or needs something different from our weather and our weather forecasts. While one person may want fine hot weather for making hay or silage, harvesting, or even holidays, others may want moisture to germinate the seeds they have sown, reduce fire risk or even to maintain nutrient availability for plant growth.
While it is not possible to satisfy these opposing needs simultaneously, accurate forecasting can at least help everyone to know how to spend their day.
Met Éireann and its forecasters are well known through their daily weather forecasts. They provide specific forecasts to many individual sectors that are affected by weather.
It is important that people affected in any way by weather be aware of the many specific services provided by Met Éireann.
In this and next week’s article, Klara Finkele from Met Eireann’s AgMet Unit outlines many of these services, explains what they provide and gives the links to their web pages so that readers can check them out and judge their potential usefulness.
National forecasts
Met Éireann provides a range of forecasting services to the public, with additional focused offerings to specific interest groups. Forecasters work around the clock to provide the most up-to-date information on weather developments to enable society protect life and property.
This is most evident in times of weather warnings, where multiple national services come together to advise on actions for the safety of the general public.
Daily forecasts to the public go out via radio, television, websites (including Met Éireann’s) and a myriad of different smartphone apps.
Forecasts are both short and long term, with forecasts for today, tonight, and tomorrow updated every few hours. The following is a listing of the many different formats in which the forecast is delivered and the extent of those forecasts.
These maps are very useful for farmers at different times of the year because they display the chance of precipitation, the likely level of precipitation and the chance of temperatures and wind speeds going over certain thresholds for jobs like spraying (see QR code panel for link).
With this forecast, data is outputted in:
> One-hour out to 90 hours.
> Three-hour intervals from 90 to 144 hours.
> Six-hour intervals from 144 to 240 hours.
This forecast has proven useful at times in recent years. As we suffer periods of incessant rainfall, or the occasional prolonged dry spell, the prospect of a change in the weather in the coming month can offer hope.
Insights
While it must only be seen as a likelihood, its insights that a specific week in the future could be warmer or colder or wetter or drier than average have proven to be correct at times.
However, it is important to remember that forecasts beyond one week become increasingly uncertain due to the chaotic nature of the atmosphere, as explained previously. When there is no clarity ahead for specific weeks, it clearly states that too. It is sensible to watch this when preparing for big jobs like planting, silage, hay and harvest.
The monthly forecast is updated on Tuesdays and Fridays (see QR code panel for link). The new seasonal forecasts are also now provided at this site. This again is mainly an expression of probability as to how the weather may develop over the next three months. This is updated around the middle of the month.