Early Indian summer will ease us into winter season

Galway city for the first three weeks of September was almost like the early days of summer in July with loads of tourists on the streets and the outdoor seating areas of pubs and restaurants filled to capacity.

With virtually no rainfall and temperatures venturing into the low 20s last week, the city has had a real Mediterranean feel to it, although the peddlers of doom are already warning that ‘we’ll pay for this yet’ and that global warming is hitting our shores.

Neither shot of pessimism really stands up to any scrutiny as the weather patterns will fluctuate from good to bad as they have done since time immemorial.

In the past, we’ve had many dry spells in September and the reason for our higher than normal temperatures over recent weeks was warm air coming straight up from the sub-tropical climes of North Africa.

Over the coming years we’ll have warm Septembers and wet ones too as well as severe winters and mild ones. Our weather comes in cycles but the real trick is to enjoy the nice stuff when it comes, and not ‘to take the good out of it’ by worrying about what’s to come into the future.

Over recent weeks, a lot of people have been referring to our Indian Summer although that description of our early September run of good weather, may be slightly inaccurate or premature.

According to reliable sources like the BBC and the Meteorological Glossary, an Indian Summer is a warm and calm spell of weather that occurs in the later autumn period of October/November although late September might also be included.

The origin of the phrase seems to date back to the 1700s when the Native Americans, that most of us refer to as Indians, made full use of good late autumn spells of weather to gather their crops, do some hunting, and possibly launch a few raids on the white ‘pioneers’ trying to take over their native lands.

Its most common usage seems to have been around the north-eastern slab of the USA, a region noted for its melting heat in the mid to late summer periods, often accompanied by high humidity.

Such conditions did not lend themselves to long days working in the fields, especially in the pre-suntan lotion days with the risk of sunstroke very high out in the open. Much of the ‘heavy lifting’ was then postponed to the late September/October period and if an area of high pressure happened to oblige and lodge over them, then it was considered a late summer for the Native Americans, or what we now know as an Indian Summer.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.