IN the final so called "English cantos" of Don Juan, Bryon grants his hero respite from his oriental trials and temptations, and indulges in some, pithy comment on the English scene. He prefaces his remarks about the weather with a characteristic declaration of infallibility
I don't err
In this, whatever other blunders lie
Upon my shoulders, here I must aver
My Muse a glass of weatherology.
And then he famously describes "the English winter ending in July, to recommence in August", a notion that we must admit, a fortiori here in Ireland, has a most depressingly familiar ring.
Rain rather than cold is the problem in an Irish August. It is a warm and sometimes very humid month often during the early weeks there may be very little wind and this, combined with August's sultry heat, makes conditions very suitable for thunderstorms. For this reason August, somewhat surprisingly, turns out to be one of the wettest months of the year in several parts of Ireland. The rain, when it does come, is often thundery and very heavy, with large amounts falling in relatively short periods of time. Indeed some of the worst flooding on record in this country has occurred in the month of August the rains of Hurricane Charley, just 10 years ago in 1986, being one notable example.
Of course, as often occurs in the realm of meteorology, the very opposite can happen too in August 1801, for example, no rain at all was experienced in Co Dublin. But this kind of thing is very rare on average a measurable amount of rain falls on 10 to 15 of August's 31 days a slightly higher total than July, but rather fewer than one would expect in a typical September.
The temperature on an average August afternoon typically reaches about 20C inland, and about 17 or 18 degrees around the coast. The highest temperature ever recorded in this month was close to 32C at the other extreme, the lowest temperature on record occurred around dawn in the very early hours of the morning of August 30th, 1964 in Rathdrum, Co Wicklow, when the mercury fell to -2.7C.
Alexander Buchan, a 19th century Scottish meteorologist who spent a great deal of his life examining temperature data, concluded that there are certain periods during the year in these islands that are habitually warmer or colder than the calendar might suggest they ought to be. August contains two such "Buchan Spells" a Buchan cold spell from 6th to 11th, and a Buchan warm spell from 12th to 15th. Let's see if they appear this year.