Summer temperatures set to remain at record high

FOR some it’s great news . . . for others not so good . . . but one way or another our summer heatwave of 2018 now looks set to roll on for the foreseeable future.

Crowded beaches, outdoor beer gardens and barbecues continue to be the order of the day through the county, but many farmers are now under serious pressure with zero grass growth over the past ten days or so.

Galway IFA Chairperson, Anne Mitchell, said that some farmers around the county – and especially those in the more intensive dairy sector – were already using up the silage that they had harvested over recent weeks.

“With the ground so dry, there is simply no growth. Putting out slurry on dry ground under a baking sun is simply not an option.

“The longer these drought conditions continue on for, the more severe it will be for farmers. Grass supplies are dwindling everywhere and there are very high soil moisture deficits,” said Anne Mitchell.

She also advised farmers to be extra-vigilant in relation to working outdoors in the current hot and sunny conditions and especially so between the hours of 11am and 4pm when the sun is at its highest in the sky.

Irish Water have also made a further appeal this week to the public to do everything possible to try and conserve what is a dwindling water supply.

They said that as of this week there were night-time water restrictions on the Aran Islands as well as the Ballyconneely and Foreglass areas in Connemara and those houses supplied by the Tonabrucky reservoir in Galway city.

In East Galway, Irish Water point out that water levels in the River Suck have now gone very low, down to a depth of 600mms (less than two feet).

The Ballinasloe treatment plant is currently at full capacity and with the Suck water levels ‘decreasing at a significant rate’, water customers in the East Galway area have been urgently requested to ‘reduce water levels in every possible way’.

Households in the Tír an Fhia/Leitir Mór are of Connemara have suffered outages with a number of leak repairs having to be carried out in the area.

Springs and boreholes supplying water to the North Galway villages of Dunmore, Glenamaddy, Kilkerrin, Moylough, Mountbellew, Ballygar and Ballymoe are ‘extremely low and a serious cause for concern’, according to Irish Water.

See full story in this week’s Connacht Tribune.