Miserable May a month to forget

If you felt a little grouchy over the weather last month, well you had good reason to be . . . as we endured one of our wettest, coldest and dullest months of May for years.

Temperatures in the city were 1.3° lower than the normal for the month, while rainfall of 128.4mm (over five inches), gave us our wettest May since 2009.

The average May temperature recorded at the NUI Galway Automatic Weather Station was 10.1°C – that’s 1.3° below the average for the fifth month of the year in the city, as recorded in Frank Gaffney Climate of Galway records (1966-2005).

Last weekend also brought showers of hailstones while the first day of June – Bank Holiday Monday – delivered a barrage of wind and rain.

Although rainfall amounts weren’t huge on Monday (10mm at NUIG), the combination of wind and low temperatures, made it a totally miserable day for anyone going outdoors.

The bad conditions also contributed to one of the quietest Bank Holiday Mondays in the city for many years, with the streets generally deserted as people stayed indoors.

To cap off the awful May we had, Met Éireann also reported that it was also our dullest for many years – Knock Airport in Mayo had its cloudiest fifth month since the weather station opened there in 1996.

Galway weather recorder, Brendan Geraghty, had his wettest May since 2009 with 4.71 inches of rainfall collected – nearly double that of the April total.

“It really was a pretty miserable month. It was wet, cold and dull – there was hardly any growth either, so it wasn’t a good month for the gardener or the farmer.

“I suppose if we have one memory from the month, it’s that of seeing people outdoors wearing their jackets, caps and gloves. It was a miserable May,” said Mr Geraghty.

On a positive note, all of the main forecasters are predicting high pressure to dominate our weather from Sunday through to the following weekend, but don’t expect any temperature records.