The current terrible summer is not part of a trend, writes Brendan McWilliams
Despite the many years of experience some of us have managed to accumulate, our Irish weather never ceases to take us by surprise.
Proof of this particular pudding lies in the fact that in the 20-odd years that I have contributed to The Irish Times, I invariably receive a request at some stage during the summer to write a piece on one or the other of two opposing themes: "How can we explain this glorious weather?" or "Why has this summer been so really awful?"
Our notion of meteorological normality, it seems, is one of just-tolerable discomfort; any brief departure from this mean of acquiescence quickly becomes a fixation of the national psyche, and demands an explanation.
This year's question, obviously, is: "Why has the summer been so terrible?".
The facts, by now, are well known. June this year brought many places twice their normal monthly rainfall, and this month, so far, has been similar in character, with parts of the east already exceeding their normal quota for the whole of July.
A casual glance at any weather map shows the immediate cause. Often at this time of year the area of high pressure semi-permanently resident in the vicinity of the Azores might be expected to extend northwards for a week or two, bringing a spell of dry, settled conditions.
But so far this summer, this has resolutely failed to happen. On the contrary, many weeks ago the normally westerly airflow aloft developed a deep kink, or trough, which still persists in the vicinity of Ireland and under which successive depressions have performed a series of graceful pirouettes, disgorging great quantities of thundery rain on a soggy landscape underneath.
Such rainfall tends to be distributed in more or less random "pockets" around the country rather than being biased towards the west as happens in the case of our more conventional weather patterns.
Even though this, by any reckoning, is an unusually bad summer, it is not at all unique and we have no need to look to climate change or global warming for its explanation. It has all happened before without the help of man-made greenhouse gases.
The summers of 1985, 1986 and 1993, for example, were all notoriously bad; 1996 was very poor; and more recently, the summer of 2002 was remarkably similar to that of the current year.
June and most of July 2002 brought frequent bouts of heavy rain and interludes of local flooding; there was a brief respite as July matured, but the rains returned with gusto with the approach of August.
One might be inclined to take some succour from the fact that August 2002 in the end turned out to be relatively pleasant, but then such patterns from previous years, while interesting for idle comparison, very rarely reproduce themselves exactly.
So as regards our doleful experience this summer, all one can say is that it has happened before, and will undoubtedly occur again. But it is not in any sense indicative of any trend, and precludes neither a glorious summer next year nor a fine sunny August in a few weeks' time.
But it must be said the short-term prospects give no cause for joy, with decidedly "changeable" weather, to put the nicest of glosses on the situation, expected to continue for the next several days to come. Nor are British Met Office experts, providers of the most authoritative seasonal forecasts for these parts, particularly encouraging in predictions for the rest of the summer.
Temperatures, according to them, will be a little above normal - not a very risky bet in an age of global warming - and rainfall, they say, will be somewhere close to average. Until some more cheerful message flashes into view, it seems wise to keep the hatches battened down and clear the drains.