Clare the driest county in the West says Met Éireann

CLARE is the driest part of the West of Ireland, with a far greater soil moisture deficit than other counties along the coast, according to figures this week.

While there have been some heavy showers in recent days, Clare County Council are maintaining a hose-pipe ban introduced two weeks ago in North Clare, the Ennis area and Tulla.
Clare’s soil moisture deficit was at 22mm on Tuesday, meaning it would take this much rain to come back to field capacity (the amount of water the soil can hold).
The lack of moisture has put pressure on water reserves according to David Timlin, director of Environmental and Water Services with Clare County Council.
“While the weather forecast is for unsettled weather in the next few days, we still require significant rainfall in the medium term. The council urges all consumers to continue to save water and be prudent in its use,” Mr Timlin said.
“It is too early to relax our guard, even though the overall situation for water supply has improved slightly. I urge all public water supply and group water scheme consumers to use water wisely. The council appreciates the efforts made by everybody to reduce consumption to date.”
He said that major sources of water in the county, such Lickeen Lake in North Clare and Castle Lake which supplies Shannon and a large tract of East Clare are at a low level.
Michael Lynch, chairman of Clare branch Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) said that agriculture in different parts of the county had been affected in different ways by the dry weather.
“It’s varying from one region to another. In the Burren, there has been very poor growth. Areas of dry land have been affected by the low rainfall and the cold spring. Wetter land has performed very well though, with the drier weather,” Mr Lynch said.
He said that many farmers had better crops than in other years. “The crops that were yielded were lighter but the quality was higher than it has been over the last few years.”
Dr John Sweeney of the Geography Department of NUI Maynooth said that the dry weather mightn’t have been different to what has been seen in recent years but really isn’t that unusual. “We are after having three relatively wet summers and this has been more of a reversion to a drier phase but it’s not exceptional.”
Met Éireann statistics indicate that Clare had the best weather during the month of June, as the mean temperature at Shannon was the highest of all weather stations, while it also had the greatest amount of sunshine. It was also very dry, as the amount of rainfall was 47% below average.
However, the weather forecast for the rest of the weeks indicates that there will be quite a bit of rain, although it will be quite warm.