Even the aerial men are fed up with the tempests

There are certain professions who shouldn’t really whinge too much about our wet and windy weather as every storm tends to bring them more work but last week when I spoke to a ‘roof man’ who specialises in fitting and replacing TV aerials, even he had taken enough of our winter battering.

We kind of a agreed in a wishful kind of way that when we’d come close to retirement that there might be a case to be made for parting with the family possessions and moving to somewhere that could offer a decent measure of dry weather and sunshine . . . but alas I fear it will be the stuff of fantasy.

It’s a bit like watching the holiday programmes on TV and just for a few seconds pretending that you’re browsing around on sun warmed pavements in shorts and sunglasses but anyway when the aerial was fixed the thought had evaporated from our minds as he went off to another chimney top and I reacquainted myself with the oilskins and wellies.

You probably don’t need any reminding but you’re going to get it anyway – yes January was another very wet month following on from a dank November and our wettest December since records began around Galway.

Storm wise, we mightn’t have fared out too badly in January with only one official home bred event in Gertrude who skirted along the north-west coast on January 28/29 but we also had an unwelcome guest from the States in Jonas, who brought us our heaviest burst of rain on the 24th and 25th.

Abbeyknockmoy weather recorder Brendan Geraghty recorded 1.15 inches (29mms.) on the 25th, courtesy of Jonas, while overall the entire month delivered 5.56 inches (141mms.) of rain over the course of 22 days.

While that January figure in itself is not too bad, taken in the context of what came before it in November (8.18” or 208mms) and December (13.29”/338mms.), it has all added up to a very sodden countryside as we seek to grasp at some straw of hope with the spring season upon us.

“Only that we had a very dry October (2.26”/57mms.), things would actually be a lot worse. We could do with one of those dry frost spells but for the moment there’s not much sign of it,” said Brendan Geraghty.

The Met Éireann weather report for January 2016 confirms the trend of the winter season just gone by – wet, mild and windy. Dublin Airport had its wettest January since 1948 with a rainfall of 118.4mms. (4.7 inches) but this paled into insignificance compared to Cork Airport where 251.7mms. (c. 10 inches) of precipitation came down during the month.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.