Wicked May left farmers grouchy

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

It’s only this week that farmers are ‘getting into the run of the summer and the silage season’ as we are getting our best spell of weather since last April – May though was horribly cold and wet too.

Temperatures in Galway were roughly 1.3° Celsius lower than the normal for the month while rainfall of 128.4mms. (over five inches) at the NUI Galway Weather Station, 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 degrees below the average for the fifth month of the year in Galway as recorded in Frank Gaffney’s Climate of Galway records.

According to those records the month just gone by was our coldest May since 1996 and our third coldest on record since 1978.

It was a very poor month for grass growth with soil temperatures across most of the West of Ireland again slipping under the 12° Celsius mark – the figure needed for optimum summer growth.

Some dairy farmers had to house their cows during some of the colder and wetter spells in May with milk yields also impacted on.

Galway IFA Dairy Chairman, Charlie Whiriskey, said that farmers on heavier lands were most affected by the poor conditions through May.

“It was a cold and wet month with poor enough growth. The proof is just not there either in the wet grass – we’re all hoping for a bit of a lift through June,” said Charlie Whiriskey.

Although June started on a wicked enough note – with the winds, rain and cold of the Bank Holiday Monday (June 1) – our first decent spell of high pressure has arrived this week, facilitating many first cuts of silage.

Contractors though have reported early cuts of silage to be ‘light enough’, again impacted on by the cold soil conditions that lasted all through May.

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.

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

The three wettest days of the month, he recorded, were the 4th (1.05 inches); the 10th (0.65 inches) and the 2nd (0.59 inches).

“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 Brendan Geraghty.