Increased use of solar photovoltaic electricity requires a better understanding of the impact of large‐scale atmospheric teleconnections on incident short wave (SW) solar radiation. Our focus is on the relationship between winter (December to February) SW radiation in northwest Europe and the dominant Euro‐Atlantic atmospheric teleconnection patterns using multiple multi‐decadal observational and gridded reanalysis datasets, with a focus on the islands of Ireland and Britain. Our study reveals that the previously reported west–east seesaw in the correlation pattern between the winter North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) index and winter SW radiation across the United Kingdom is complex, involving several zonal changes in the sign of the NAO–SW correlations (multiple seesaws). By comparison with the NAO, the east Atlantic pattern exerts only a weak control on winter SW radiation across the United Kingdom and Ireland, although in the western part of the Iberian Peninsula and adjacent Atlantic Ocean significant positive correlations occur. High values of the Scandinavian pattern index result in higher than average winter SW radiation in much of northern Europe, although it is evident that some regions (e.g. northeast England, east Scotland and the adjacent North Sea area) exhibit the opposite behaviour. Inter‐seasonal variations in the dominant atmospheric flow and moisture transport directions, steered by large‐scale atmospheric pressure patterns, combined with orographic uplift and rainout effects on the windward side of hills and mountains are interpreted to be the physical drivers of the observed zonal variations and correlation sign reversals between winter SW anomalies and the NAO index. The zonal correlation patterns between winter short wave solar radiation and the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) across Ireland and the United Kingdom are complex but are linked to land surface elevation. Winter short wave radiation anomalies across Ireland and the United Kingdom in both strongly positive (blue curve) and negative (red curve) NAO winters can be explained by interactions between the dominant NAO‐steered moisture‐bearing winds and local topography (black curve), causing orographic uplift and rainout on the windward side of slopes.