"Why are you Irish people always talking about the weather?" asked a visitor from central Germany who had come over to improve his English. "Well, because it's there, because it is so unpredictable, so changeable." Whereas, in his own home surroundings, winter was definitely winter with snow, cold and ice; and summer warm and bright and dry...and soon. Yes, we do talk a lot about it, and often we get it wrong.
Brendan McWilliams, in his Weather Eye of February 9th, put us grumblers in our places, when so many of us were saying that this February was extraordinary, we never remembered one like it, and wasn't March supposed to be the time for winds? For he opened up with: "A vigorous storm or two is the norm, not the exception, at this time of the year." And he gave us the reason: because the temperature contrast between the equator and the poles is greatest. And "the interaction between the very cold air in the north and the warmer air farther south provides the stimulus for the development of deep depressions which sweep across the Atlantic, and now and then wreak havoc on our Irish shores."
He gives examples of previous Februarys which were very stormy. February 1990 was a very turbulent month from the first day and on a dozen subsequent days. Then in 1994, the 3rd had a storm with widespread damage. Perhaps the worst storm in Irish history, he says, was also in February but long ago, 20th-27th 1904. But the date of his article, February 9th had, down the years, so often given storms.
Yes, indeed a lot about weather in our talk. But did we in the last week or two not have several days of brilliant sun? Cold but brilliant; and daffodils flowered before their time. But how many called out to their neighbour, "Lovely day, thank God"? February 15th used to be opening day for trout fishing in the Eastern Region, and a group of anglers remember often eating their sandwiches in the shelter of a disused shed while hailstones rattled down on the tin roof. And, come to think of it, there was the head of family who insisted that St Patrick's Day had to be celebrated with a picnic - always. And all of the brood had to come. Rain is the chief memory. Sheltering from it in hedges and behind walls; but food definitely better than the fare of sandwiches at the river. Why, now, do we, indeed, talk so much about the weather? Answer that. Y