Mayo claims top hot spot in sunny August

Sunny Mayo was the State's top hot spot this August with two of its weather stations recording their highest temperatures in 50 years.

The official Met Éireann report for the month confirms that it was the hottest August since the record-breaking year of 1995.

August 8th was the hottest day of the year when the Mayo weather stations of Belmullet and Claremorris recorded values of 27.7 degrees and 29.5 degrees respectively - the highest temperatures seen since the middle of the last century.

The entire country got lucky with the good weather. Temperatures topped 20 degrees almost every day throughout the month.

The hottest period was from August 4th to 8th, when temperatures topped 25 degrees in many places during the day and remained above 15 degrees at night. It was also the sunniest August since the 1995 heat wave. The best of the sun was recorded not in Mayo, but in Rosslare, Co Wexford, which got a wonderful 239 hours of sunshine.

The midlands were the least sunny place to be with just 175 hours recorded at Birr, Co Offaly, however this was still the most sun the midlands had seen since 1995. "Anticyclonic weather" was responsible for all the heat and the sun, Met Éireann said, and it also meant that the month was very dry.

There were less than five wet days during the month and in Kilkenny only two millimetres of rain fell making it the driest month there since records began in 1957.

The whole summer was the warmest since 1995. "Mean air temperatures for the season were over a degree higher than normal" in most places, according to Met Éireann, except in the south and southwest, "where dull weather during July kept temperatures closer to average values".

July let the side down in the sunshine stakes throughout the State. June and August were "very sunny months" but July was dull. In the south-west things were very grey indeed with just over half the normal amount of sunshine recorded.

Rainfall levels for the season showed big variations with some areas recording a drier than normal summer while other places were wetter than they they had been in years.

Casement Aerodrome had its driest summer since 1995 while at both Valentia Observatory and Clones it was the wettest since 1998.