Long term weather forecast for the next few weeks...Nov/Dec 2010

Most of the time, weather forecasts are only good for 5 days ahead at max. That is especially the case in Ireland where we get so many low pressure weather systems crossing the country.

Recently however, there has been a noticable change in the weather...ie. Its cold! The UK MET office are now saying that we are likely to be in for a prolonged spell of cold weather which may have implications for events on over the next few weeks.

Essentially, what has happened over the last few weeks is that the Jet Stream in the upper atmosphere has been going in a strong West to East direction across the Atlantic dragging all of the low pressure systems underneath it. This has given us wet, reasonably mild and windy conditions. See diagram below...

Now however, the Jet Stream has slowed down and has taken a more Northerly route up over Greenland and this is in turn dragging very cold polar air down over the UK and Ireland.

The forecast is that this type of weather system, once established, can last quite a while. So the weather over the next few weeks is likely to be very cold with the possibility of icy conditions.

This may well have implications for any race coming up in November and the first half of December, especially the further North you go. If there is ice on any of the race routes, some events may well be called off. If you remember, this was the case about 11 months ago when the Belgooly '4', the Bandon '5' and the Mallow '10' were postponed or cancelled.

On a more local level, the main interest for runners over the next few weeks is the weekend of the 11th/12th of December with the Marathon and Half-Marathon in Clonakilty, the Cork BHAA 'Simon' Turkey Trot in Cork City and the Half-Marathon in Waterford taking place. If the weather goes as predicted then it seems likely that we will avoid any of the Winter storms which would have a huge impact on the long distance events, especially in Clonakilty where the Marathon route takes in part of the coast. The big fear however is that in avoiding the mild windy conditions, we get the other extreme where it gets too cold.

Hopefully, conditions on the South coast won't be so harsh and the events in Cork/Waterford will go ahead ok. It might be worth keeping an eye on the weather forecast though over the next week or so, especially if you have to travel a long distance for any of these races.