John Tyrrell has appeared in this column before. He first featured in April 1991, when he gave a talk to the Irish Meteorological Society about 18th century weather records in the south of Ireland. He lectures on climatology at UCC, so his topic was entirely apt.
He next hit the headlines in January 1993, when he was a passenger on a car ferry en route from Cork to France. The ship encountered a freak wave in Irish waters with quite spectacular results. Being an expert on this subject too, and in the right place at the right time, Dr Tyrrell's authoritative account of that event was widely publicised.
Then in December 1996, he delivered an Irish Meteorological Society Christmas lecture on "Winds of Misfortune". The sub-title, "The Failure of Wolfe Tone's Expedition in December 1796", revealed the talk for what it was, a bicentennial reflection on the effects of the weather on that ill-fated revolutionary undertaking.
Two years later, Dr Tyrrell continued his focus on the closing years of the 18th century with "The Burning Summer of 1798", and in the meantime he has encapsulated his vast knowledge of the climate and history of that period into a recently published and very readable book, Weather and Warfare: a Climatic History of the 1798 Rebellion.
But now John Tyrrell is on a different tack. As Irish co-ordinator of TORRO, the British-based Tornado research organisation, he has for several years been investigating the occurrence of tornadoes in Ireland. Because of their frequency and high profile in the United States, we tend to think of these as American phenomena, but they can, and often do, occur virtually anywhere in the world outside the polar regions.
Every year, for example, there are about 100 to 150 tornadoes in the south of England, and while these atmospheric whirling dervishes are less frequent in Ireland, and considerably less vicious than their continental or transatlantic cousins, they occur from time to time and leave an impressive trail of damage in their wake. Dr Tyrrell has accumulated a mass of information on the nature of tornadoes in Ireland. The results of his research have been widely published and presented at several international conferences, and he will share his vast knowledge of the subject this evening with members and friends of the Irish Meteorological Society. The talk begins at 8 p.m. in the Earlsfort Terrace premises of UCD.