Last year was not as wet as we thought it was

By TOM GILMORE EVEN though Athenry had the highest daily rainfall in Ireland on Dec 22 of over one inch, this was localised rainfall because a few miles away in Abbeyknockmoy only .38 of an inch of rain was recorded on the same day. These statistics are by amateur meteorologist Brendan Geraghty who has been collecting data on the weather since back in the early 1960s. 'According to Met Eireann they recorded over 100 tonnes of rain (per acre) in Athenry that day while we had only 39 tonnes in Abbeyknockmoy. But that is often the situation, you can drive along one section of a road and it is dry but a few miles further on there may be a deluge,' says Brendan. Dry spell But his end-of-year figures show that even though we had most of the rain in the last six months of the year, the dry spell we enjoyed up to June resulted in less rain during 2012 than in the previous year. 'In 2011 we had 51.51 inches of rain in 191 wet days but in 2012, which many thought was a wetter year, we had 47.5 inches in 190 wet days. 'I know that is only one day less but when one checks the rainfall for all of the month of last March it was only .88 of an inch and we often got more rain than that in one night,' says Brendan. He added that last March was so dry that people were basking in temperatures of 21 or 22 degrees around St Patrick's Day, which was unheard of for this time of year in the past. But he agrees that the final wetter six months have resulted in fields remaining saturated with water and turf being of much poorer quality as it did not have the sunshine required to dry it properly. Brendan's figures for rainfall compare month for month for the past year and in the early months, apart from last January, those figures showed a much drier Spring of 2012 than in the previous year. March a record low According to his records, in January 2011 we had 3.38 inches of rain compared to 4.45 for the same month last year. But then in February the figure dropped to 2.03 compared to 5.36 for the same month in 2011. March 2012 was the month that he recorded a record low rainfall of .88 of an inch compared to 2.16 inches the previous March. In April the figure was still slightly down on the previous year at 2.60 inches, which was slightly better than the 2.65 inches for the same month the previous year. In May there was an even more dramatic fall to 2.10 inches compared with 4.46 the previous May. 'But it was during June 2012 that our troubles began with an increase in rainfall to 6.21 inches compared to only 3.59 for the same month in 2011,' says Brendan. In July the figure was a high 4.64 inches, which was well up on the 2.33 during July of 2011. August was also up slightly to 4.77 inches from 4.02 for the same month in 2011. But during the final four months, while the rainfall figures were high, they were still less than during the last four months of 2011. In September the figures dropped from 4.5 inches to 3.10 for the same month in 2011, in October it was down again to 6.24 compared with 6.81 for October 2011. November last year saw rainfall of 5.21 compared to 5.41 during November 2011 while last month we had 5.07 inches of rain but we had 6.47 for the previous December. 'Even though the figures were down for the second half of the year it was still not as if we had a lot of sunshine. We got one good week during September but even though that week was dry there was still little or no sunshine,' says Brendan. He added that the past two years have both been much wetter than 2010 when we had only 33.14 inches of rain for the year and only 117 wet days. Asked about some long term forecasts that suggest this summer might be a scorcher, Brendan is sceptical. 'Even with the most modern of technology the best they can do is forecast for about ten days in advance. I don't think that anyone can predict what the weather during the summer of 2013 will be like at this stage.'