November brought cold but welcome comforts

Country Living with Francis Farragher

A friend of mine, who I met last week while buying some provisions in the local store, had taken the advice in one of my previous columns to keep a record of the predictions of Ken Ring to see how he would fare out through the year.

The New Zealand mathematician, author and teacher did ‘hit the jackpot’ earlier in the year when he predicted our best period of the Summer would be the last week in May and first week of June.

Credit where credit is due here, but as my friend reminded me in the provisions’ store last week, the predictions from Ken Ring have been way off the mark for November, a month that has been remarkable for its very low rainfall.

While Ken Ring did predict that November would be sunnier than normal – which it was – he then forecast that the month ‘would bring early rain, which then returns in each succeeding week. There are no dry spells of more than one or two days. Snow arrives for many in the last week’.

As my friend remarked – as he paid for his loaf of bread, pound of butter and litre of milk – Mr. Ring was certainly a long way off the mark for November and that will thrill no end the serious meteorologists who place no standing at all in his predictions.

Despite most of the scientific evidence and meteorological wisdom going against him, the New Zealander will always have his fans and the vast majority of people just love to hear predictions of weather months and sometimes even years in advance.

Weather forecasting organisations from all over the world though – with all their computer models, satellite technology and highly refined charting of the movement of weather systems – still find it hard at times to predict the weather even four or five days in advance, although there are some who stick their necks out with 10 day forecasts.

The AccuWeather forecasting service with its HQ in Pennsylvania State University go as far as giving a forecast three months in advance – if you visit their website, you will get a summary forecast for Galway into the first week of March, 2017.

If for a second, you think that is some gimmicky service, this is far from the case. The AccuWeather service employs around 400 people (including over 100 meteorologists), providing commercial forecasting services around the world, as well as a 24-hour TV weather channel across the United States. So apart from all our hours of gossip and speculation about weather, it is a very big business.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.