Good riddance to year with a real sting in tail

Country Living with Francis Farragher

Many people will be saying good riddance to 2015 after varying degrees of hardship were experienced due to the rain battering brought about by the winter storms of November and December.

There was a real sting in the tail to 2015 and while the storms mightn’t have brought hugely destructive winds, their most malevolent legacy was in the amount of water they left behind, especially in the vulnerable flood areas across the region.

For many parts of the county, it was our wettest year on record, with for example, Abbeyknockmoy weather recorder, Brendan Geraghty, collecting a total of 61.1 inches (1577mms.) rainfall in his goblet during the course of the 12 months.

It was the first time ever since his records began in the mid-1960s that he topped the 60 inch mark, but as the accompanying charts indicate, the real damage was done in the last two months of the year.

Between them, those months brought us a staggering 21.5 inches (546mms.) of rainfall – 8.2” (208mms.) in November and a whopping 13.3” (338mms.) through the month of December. Such rainfall had to bring about problems and especially so along water channels that hadn’t been maintained and cleaned, down through the years. December was the wettest month ever recorded by Brendan Geraghty, surpassing the previous record holder – November, 2009, that delivered 12.7” (323mms.) of rainfall, during another horrible month of floods and hardship.

“By the end of the year any rainfall that came just had to spill over. Rivers, streams, drainage channels and lakes were just all full to the brim – the water had nowhere to go,” said Brendan Geraghty.

The late Frank Gaffney, who worked for many years in the Physics Department of NUI Galway, also kept a most assiduous and detailed record of weather statistics and one of his wettest years ever recorded was 2002 at his city station in Newcastle, Galway city. His ’02 total of 1587mms. (62.5”) of rainfall takes some beating although his 2009 total of 1496mms. (59”) was also close to the top of the league.

Flooding and heavy rains have always been part and parcel of our weather and climate regime in Ireland, given our location on the eastern side of the Atlantic Ocean, but the frequency and severity of the flood events do seem to be on the increase.  Talk to people like long time flood relief campaigner in South Galway, Mattie Hallinan, and straight away he’ll reel off three winters over the past seven years where people in that area have stared at catastrophe: 2009, 2012/’13 and 2015/’16.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.