Satellite Imagery  (Cloud Cover)

   Satellites images showing cloud cover, updated hourly, also can play back as an animation in hourly steps. 
 Visible images are available only for daytime hours, use the infrared link for night time cloud cover.
Images are updated hourly at twenty past the hour.      

See below for a 24 hour forecast from the windy site

Click on Image below for 2 hour colour high resolution sequence in 15 minute steps.

Pressure Charts

Atmospheric pressure plays a big part in our weather, low pressure usually indicates bad weather while high pressure can indicate clear skies, frost in the winter and sunny days in the summer, but not always. Isobars that are close together indicates strong wind, widely spaced isobars indicate little wind.

  Met office time lapse pressure chart

Rainfall

   Left map   -> Latest rainfall map using ground radar - Met Eireann  
   Right map -> Predicted accumilated rainfall and pressure over next 3 hours - Met Eireann

 Click here to see rainfall over the last number of hours as an animation, takes you to Met Eireann's site

Wind

The below chart shows windspeed and direction, the wind is shown in two forms: 
1) as Wind arrows - the head of the arrow shows the direction in which the wind is blowing and the 'feathers' the strength; a short feather is 5 knots, a long feather is 10 knots and a triangle is 50 knots - add   the feathers to get the wind speed.
2) as warning regions where speeds above 22 knots are coloured; the colour bands correspond with Beaufort Force 6 and higher - Met Eireann.

Jetstream

The JETSTREAM is a high altitude wind.
When the jet stream is over Ireland,  "seeing" is usually poor/bad.
Bad "seeing" makes the stars twinkle more and reduces details visible on the planets through telescopes.
Grey areas indicate the current location of the jetstream. 

Aurora

While not strictly weather phenomena, Aurora and Noctilucent clouds occur in the Earths atmosphere and are in themselves very interesting events to witness. For more information on aurora, noctilucent clouds and solar activity, see www.spaceweather.com

Latest Auroral Halo image for the Northern Hemisphere, deep red indicates Aurora activity.
Times are in GMT (UT), Summer time = GMT+1
If there is auroral activity, its also worth checking out our solar page.

Latest  NOAA Aurora forecast
Courtest of the  National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

The Estimated 3-hour Planetary Kp-index is derived at the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center using data from the following ground-based magnetometers: Boulder, Colorado; Chambon la Foret, France; Fredericksburg, Virginia; Fresno, California; Hartland, UK; Newport, Washington; Sitka, Alaska; Jeju, Korea. These data are made available thanks to the cooperative efforts between SWPC and data providers around the world, which currently includes the U.S. Geological Survey, the British Geological Survey, the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris, and the Korean Space Weather Center See http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/ for more details.

Noctilucent Clouds

This polar Noctilucent Cloud map pictured below is a composite of near-realtime 
images from NASA's Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere (AIM) research satellite, this is the latest image
assembled by researchers at the University of Colorado's Laboratory for 
Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP), note that the image isnt always up to date.

Note that in the winter, the below map will be a NLC map of Antarctica, 
in the Summer it shows a NLC map of the Artic.  
This is due to the fact that the icecap needs to be in daylight for NLC's to be visible.