One of the wettest winters in over 40 years

The meteorological Winter period of December, January and February has been the third wettest over the past 42 years, local records show. During those three months, we experienced 515mms. of rainfall (over 20 inches) with February also delivering above average rainfall of 123mms (almost 5 inches).The wettest on record was the 1994/’95 Winter season which delivered a massive 600mms of rainfall (23.6 inches) — the season of the house evacuations in South Galway — while the previous year produced 575mms of precipitation. Our only respite in the month of February was a 10 day period from February 9 to 18, which was almost completely dry.However some heavy bursts of rainfall in the latter part of the month have again left most farmlands either flooded or completely saturated — only free draining, sandy soils remain trafficable for machinery. The wettest day of the month was Saturday, February 2,which produced 26mms (over an inch) of rain — the wet start to the month also coincided with a real cold snap.The thermometer dropped to –7.4ºC on February 2 and to –7.1ºC on February 1— the coldest nights of the Winter so far. However the mean temperature for the month of 6.1ºC was 0.2ºC above the average of 5.9ºC for February. Somewhat surprisingly — given the wet pattern of the Winter so far — sunshine hours of 72 for the month was well above the average. On ..............