Month of the big freeze and late downpours

IT mightn’t have broken any records but December 2022 will be remembered for the ‘big freeze’ that lasted for almost two weeks through the first half of our last month.

The temperatures started to dip from around December 6 onwards as a huge polar air mass edged down over Ireland with the extremely cold period lasting from December 3 to the 16th.

Athenry’s Met Éireann weather station, on two nights – December 6th and 15th – recorded temperatures as low as -8.1°C while on those nights the grass temperatures dipped to as low as -11.7°C.

The ‘big freeze’ led to a whole series of weather warnings being issues by Met Éireann with some farmers also experiencing serious problems with pipes into sheds freezing over.

At the height of our cold snap, daytime temperatures struggled to even reach freezing point (0°C) while on Monday, December 12, the maximum daytime temperature recorded in Athenry was -1.5°C.

That northern area of freezing high-pressure brought us the bonus though of an extremely dry spell of weather although the rains of last week have tended to ‘balance the books’ in terms of rainfall totals for the month.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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