Welcome to a strange month of hurricanes and equinoxes
September is always one of the great months of change in the calendar with the start of a new school year; the arrival of the autumnal equinox; the sun not rising until after 7am and then retiring before 8pm; the return of the Late Late Show (no, not the repeats) while little thoughts of wintertime and Christmas occasionally slip into our consciousness.
Some people love the mellowness of the autumn season with that soft mix of red, brown and golden shades embellished by a lowering sun – in the United States there is a great affection for what is known as The Fall but I’ve never really been seduced by the loss of the light and the inevitable feeling that the season of winter is not far away.
There have been mixed feelings about our Summer gone by, a season that ended according to the meteorological calendar on August 31, but on balance the months of June, July and August slipped into the ‘not too bad’ category.
Our Summer started quite spectacularly with a dry spell at the end of May turning into a mini-heatwave for the first nine days of June where maximum temperatures on the 4th and 5th exceeded 23˚ Celsius. (Met. Éireann station, Athenry).
Those were the couple of weeks when we all nurtured hopes of a cracking summer to follow but alas that fortnight was to be our lengthiest spell of sunshine for the entire season.
We did have the briefest of hot spot interludes on the Monday of August 15 (Lady Day in Athenry), and the following day when the thermometer reached 25.5˚ Celsius, one of our warmest days of the entire Summer.
It was though not a very wet Summer by any means, although there were some striking local variations as regards rainfall. Abbeyknockmoy weather man Brendan Geraghty had less than three inches of rainfall during the month of August, just over three inches in July and under three inches for the month of June – overall a bit drier than average.
Two of the wetter spots across the province for August were at Knock Airport, 118mms. (close on 5 inches) and Athenry, 96.3mms (close on 4 inches) while at Mace Head in south-west Connemara, rainfall was below the three inches’ mark.
Dublin Airport was a lot drier than the West of Ireland through July and August with a total of just 106mms. or over 4 inches for the two months, less than half of what fell in Knock for the same period.
For more, read this week's Connacht Tribune.