Met Éireann confirms it was a wet summer

A WET month of August rounded off a terrible summer, statistics this week showed.

According to the figures, the amount of rainfall in August was 9% above average, while for the summer, which Met Éireann defines as June, July and August, it was some 69% above average. Both of these figures are for the weather station at Shannon Airport.

The average temperature for August at Shannon was 0.3˚C above average, giving a mean temperature for August of 16.4˚C, the warmest since 2003. Indeed, Shannon recorded a temperature of 25.6˚C, on August 10, which was actually the highest temperature recorded at any of the Met Éireann weather stations all summer.

While Shannon recorded a mean seasonal temperature of 14.9˚C, this was still 0.9˚C below normal.
The amount of sunshine was 13% below average for the summer as a whole, despite being 16% above average for the month of August.

Andrew Dundass, chairman of the Irish Farmers’ Association in Clare said the weather has caused issues for their members. “It’s a desperate summer. We can see the effects of it. It’s very serious for some people. In a farming context, soil type is probably the big issue. You have some people who aren’t affected but the people with the difficult soil and particularly those on the difficult soil who are well stocked, some of these people are in serious trouble. If we have a good month of September, it’ll help but if we don’t there’ll be a winter fodder situation.”

He said Teagasc are holding a meeting this week to bring interested parties together to see what can be done to alleviate the situation.