In the end, it turned out to be a run-of-the-mill January

Country Living with Francis Farragher

Despite the odd cold few days here and there, rather dire predictions of a vicious arctic winter to descend upon us, seem to have proven to be largely unfounded.

November was barely under way when every second prediction was of awful times to come – from so called weather bombs to the arrival of a polar vortex – that would make all our lives hell (or the freezing equivalent of it), for the rest of the winter.

New Zealander Ken Ring, who admittedly was on something of a good run with his predictions for our last two summers, was not as lucky with his winter forecasts.

He didn’t go for the White Christmas, but he predicted the first 20 days of January to be very dry and very cold with the mercury dropping down regularly to the -4°/-5° Celsius mark, while after the new moon of January 20/21, we were to warm up.

I’m sorry to disappoint fans of the canny New Zealander, but the reality was far different in Galway and across Ireland for the month, as a perusal of some of the statistics reveal.

The first two weeks of the month were in fact quite wet, with Abbeyknockmoy weather recorder Brendan Geraghty showing the two wettest days of the month occurring on the 12th (0.65 inches of rainfall) and on the 8th (0.68 inches). In fact he recorded 15 wet days in a row from the 1st to the 15th.

As for us all freezing to death during those early weeks of January, the period produced some extremely mild days as we came under the influence of a damp but very mild south-westerly airflow.

According to the Met. Eireann, January 2015 weather report, some of the highest temperatures of recent years were recorded on days during the early part of the month.

The highest temperature of the month was recorded at Oak Park in Carlow on the Friday of January 9 (a balmy 16.2°C) while on the same day, Shannon Airport had its mildest January day in 22 years, when the thermometer touched 14.7° C.

Temperature wise, there was a cold snap between January 17 and 19, when the when the coldest night/morning of the month was at the Dunsany Met. Eireann station in Co. Meath, when an air reading of -6.2°C was recorded.

Overall, according to the Met. Eireann report, the average temperature for January came in, near or slightly below, the average for the month.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.