Not our driest year but timing was perfect with 2014 weather

Country Living with Francis Farragher

There’s an old half-truth about Ireland getting the same amount of rain every year, regardless of the very wet months or the dry ones that we get.

Of course no two years will exactly be the same in terms of rainfall amounts, but there’s certainly a grain of truth in the ‘all years are equal’ theory, as during most 12 months spells we tend to get just under the 50 inches mark.

Rarely is there anything approaching an even monthly spread of rainfall in Ireland, with the probability of a wet July just as strong as a saturated December or January. Looking back on 2014, the initial impression might be that it was a very dry year, and we all have memories of a generally good summer followed on by a glorious September.

My old friend, the late Frank Gaffney, always said that memory plays tricks with people’s perception of weather and when we look back on 2014, there is a tendency to forget the two very wet months we had in January and February.

The NUI Galway Automatic Weather Station recorded January rainfall in 2014 of 192mms. (7.5 inches) for January and 182mms. (7.2 inches) for February, two months of the year when we were buffeted by a series of Atlantic storms. 2014 actually ended up being a wetter year than average and a good bit (nearly three inches) damper than 2013 but of course it had the saving grace of a dry summer and autumn period.

Abbeyknockmoy weather recorder Brendan Geraghty had a total figure of 46.61 inches (1184mms.) for last year as compared to 43.7 inches (1110mms.) for 2013.

“I was a little surprised going through the figures to notice that last year was a fair bit wetter than 2013 but two very wet months at the start of 2014 was the main reason for this.

“Overall though for last year we couldn’t have ordered it much better. We got the rain when we could take it at the start of the year and then the drier and warmer conditions just came at the right time,” said Brendan Geraghty.

He said that so far this January a similar pattern seemed to be emerging with over two inches of rain falling in the first nine days while more of the same seems to be on the cards over the coming weeks.

The Galway rainfall figure trends have generally been replicated right across the country, according to the 2014 Met Eireann Annual Summary, with the precipitation figure, near or just above, the average.

A curious little trend to emerge in the past year was for parts of the West of Ireland to be drier and sunnier than parts of the East and Midlands with Belmullet on the north-western tip of Mayo enjoying the sunniest day of the year in 2014 with 15.8 hours of sunshine on June 17.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.