This article is from page 8 of the 2012-08-07 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 8 JPG
PARTS of the mid-west experienced twice the amount of average rainfall during June and July, according to Met Eireann.
Figures for July recorded at Met Eireann’s station at Shannon Airport was 140 per cent of average in July.
Temperatures were also 1.4 per cent lower than average. The highest mean temperature, however, was recorded at Shannon Airport at 14.9 degrees. Met Eireann spokesman Hugh Daly explained that the rainfall for June and July was significantly higher than normal.
He said, “After a wet June and a wet July, we’ve had two pretty bad months. Not record-breaking bad or out of the ordinary like we’ve previously had. In June and July, rainfall recorded at Shannon was 240 per cent of average, which is significant. That’s twice the normal amount of rainfall for the two months.”
Mr Daly continued, “Having one bad month on top of another has really compounded the situation. A constant period of heavy rainfall meant the saturated soils did not have the time to recover. We had low pressure and northerly winds keeping temperatures down and rainfall high.”
“We had no string of pleasant days, it was constantly interrupted by rain. I was looking through the charts there and I couldn’t find one day in where it wasn’t raining in any part of the country. It was always raining somewhere,” he added.
Apart from being bad news for farmers, the poor weather is also contributing to a decline in domestic tourism in the west.
According to Eugene Maher, CEO of Shannon Ferries, the near constant bad weather is convincing many families to cancel short breaks and day trips.
He explained, “The biggest decline has been in domestic traffic. People just can’t afford to go anywhere anymore. People are not taking long journeys, long trips. That’s a consequence of both domestic economic woes, less money in the pocket, as much as it due to the weather. In tandem with the economic downturn, Ireland has probably experienced five of the worst summers in history that has had a huge damaging effect on domestic tourism.”