Hello to season of mists and mellow fruitfulness

We’re tending to get the ‘rub of the green’ over recent months with our weather, following the storms of late December and that awful Spring of 2013 when the grass stopped growing and farmers had to import feed to keep their stock alive for the season.

We’ve enjoyed two relatively good summers in a row and just as the peak of the harvest season comes upon us, we’re blessed with a late blast of summer, although there will be a few moans among the schoolgoers about the weather improving as they settle in behind their desks.

Admittedly, we endured our troubles last Winter, most notably in the series of violent storms that ravaged our coastlines from late December through to early February, leaving us with an overall damages bill of about €150 million. The reason for that was a rush of cold polar, hitting warmer stuff over America, before gaining more energy as it flew across the warmer waters of the Atlantic.

The vagaries of weather and the hurricane season looks like being very kind to us this week with our good fortune largely attributable to the adventures of Hurricane Cristobal, a system that looped around the east coast of America last week. Quite often, the tail end of these hurricanes transforms into a pretty run-of-the-mill Atlantic depression that frequently tracks across the ocean, bringing wind and rain to our shores for a day or two.

Cristobal has been a quite kind lady, deciding, with the help of the Jet Stream, to take a more northerly course across Iceland last weekend and when this happens, there is a twofold positive dividend for Ireland and the UK. The more northerly path of both the storm and the Jet Stream first of all allows high pressure, or what we often refer to as the Azores High, to push up over us.

As an added bonus, the migration of the southern air to our shores will bring a rise in temperatures (although not as hot as predicted last week) so for the early days of September, it will be quite pleasant. It really all adds up to a perfect end to the summer, allowing the last of the corn to be harvested in almost perfect conditions with a firm sod and dry seed.

As can be gauged from the initial letter C, Cristobal is the third tropical storm in the Atlantic area, being preceded by Arthur and Bertha, but none of them will really ring a bell unless of course they leave a trail of death and destruction behind like a Katrina, or a Charley on our own shores back in August of 1986.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.