City basks in Med temperatures as gauge hits 27.9°C

Yesterday was the hottest day of the year in the city so far with temperatures almost reaching the 28° Celsius mark at the NUI Galway Automatic Recording Station.

Temperatures peaked at 27.9°C by 4pm yesterday afternoon at the NUIG station, beating the previous best for the year of 24.3° on Saturday, June 8.

It could get even hotter through today and Wednesday with Met Éireann predicting maximum temperatures of 29°C in places – one of the highest temperature peaks of recent years was 28.7°C on June 2, 2009.

The wall-to-wall sunshine and high temperatures is good news for the local tourist industry, with the Salthill beaches likely to resemble the Costa del Sol over the next week.

The temperature peaks are likely to ease towards the weekend but the good news is that our current settled spell of weather looks likely to continue into the early days of next week.

In its monthly outlook for July, the BBC is predicting that the Azores High – the blocking anticyclone giving us our current heat wave – will gradually retreat to the South West around the Wednesday and Thursday of July 17/18.

Weather-forecast.com, which compiles 10-day predictive charts, seem ‘pretty solid’ that our current settled spell of weather will continue over the next 10 days, although the temperatures may drop back a little from this Thursday on.

Head of Operations for Fáilte Ireland in the West, Fiona Monaghan, said that the spell of lovely Summer weather always created a bounce in the tourism business, especially in the domestic market.

“When we do get the fine weather, it does help to show off what a magnificent country we have,” she added.

Read more in today’s Connacht Sentinel