Galway City hotter than Barcelona and Corfu as temperatures hit 24.3C

BY FRANCIS FARRAGHER

WE all knew that it wouldn’t last . . . but at least for one weekend in the year, the city it was balmier than Barcelona, Corfu and Los Angeles.

Temperatures peaked in Galway on Saturday when the thermometer touched 24.3° Celsius – easily the hottest weekend of the year so far.

That compared with temperatures last week of 21°C in Los Angeles and 23°C in Barcelona and Corfu.

It led to a bumper weekend in Salthill with the beaches packed for the first time this year – shops, pubs, restaurants and hotels reported a ‘flying trade’.

The NUI Galway automatic weather station recorded the top temperature of 24.3°C, just 0.7° below the highest in the country at Newport, Mayo, of 25°C.

Yesterday’s rain brought down the curtain on our mini heatwave and for the moment at least, there is little sign of any immediate recovery.

Met Eireann are predicting the generally unsettled conditions to continue through the weekend with rain never far away, although there will be some good dry intervals too. There is the risk of some heavier rain through parts of Thursday and Friday.

However, there are some tentative indications that high pressure could build again from the South early next week, but meteorologists are not at all certain about this scenario.

Overall it was a wetter than normal May with the NUI Galway station, recording rainfall for the month at 118.4mms. or 4.67 inches, as compared to the average for the month of 75mms. (3 inches).

After a relatively dry, if very harsh, February and March, the last two months have been wetter than average with 93mms. (3.66 inches) of rainfall in April.

May was also a cooler month that the average, with a mean temperature of 10.5° recorded at NUIG. According to the late Frank Gaffney’s climate of Galway records, the average May temperature comes in at 11.5°C.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Sentinel.