Weather records fell like tenpins yesterday, as the State basked in temperatures more appropriate to May. And with warm air currents still sweeping up from north Africa, the early part of the weekend looks like being at least as mild.
Clones was a sweltering 16.3C yesterday afternoon, making the north Monaghan town slightly hotter than Madrid. The figure was a full 2.3C higher than the weather station's previous February best. But, while this was the most dramatic performance of the day, many other parts of the State also set records.
Birr, more often associated with Ireland's lowest temperatures, was a balmy 15.5C, half a point higher than the previous record. Kilkenny's 15.6C was also a record, and at 15.3C Dublin at least equalled its previous best. Even so, no weather station came near the alltime high for the month: the 18.1C logged at the Ordnance Survey Office in Phoenix Park on February 23rd, 1893.
The unseasonable weather is confusing plant and animal life. Flowers are blooming early; plants normally killed by the winter are surviving into a second season; and tropical animals in Dublin Zoo are escaping their winter quarters and lapping up the sun.
Even the lesser-spotted foreign tourist - not normally seen outdoors until the middle of March - has been affected. It could be seen yesterday on the open upper decks of tour buses, normally its summer habitat.
With spring breaking out all over, Dublin's Botanic Gardens is experiencing frenetic activity. Flowering cherry and plum trees are several weeks ahead of schedule, magnolias are set to flower next week instead of March, and African shrubs normally killed by the Irish winter are "perennialising themselves," according to head gardener, Paul Maher. The bad news, he explains, is that while snowdrops and daffodils are blooming earlier, too, the mild weather will chop as much as two weeks off their already-short lives.
In Dublin Zoo, the gorillas and orang-utans were out sunning themselves yesterday, "almost unthinkable in February" according to zoo director, Peter Wilson. "They get very miserable when it's cold and wet." .
