No, it’s not an alien spaceship, nor a meteorite, it’s the sun. I had not expected this when I came out of a lecture in the middle of February and looked up into the sky. Two minutes later the rare spectacle had ended and it started snowing again. If you think this story is made up, you are incorrect, it occurred just like this.
Yes, it’s not a made-up story, even if it is a little exaggerated and put into the words of Jonathan Frakes, the commentator of ‘Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction’. This little narrative sequence is the perfect example of Irish weather. Not the specific event of snow, but the unpredictability and uncertainty of the weather. This uncertainty has been running through my studies in Dublin for almost two years now. From the first moment when I landed in Dublin and the taxi driver charmingly made fun of my wet clothes and the sudden weather change, all the way to the last weekend when I finally decided to go on a tour to the famous cliffs of Moher which had to be cancelled at 6am due to a storm coming towards the green island.
All these events are perfect illustrations of Irish weather, but what makes Irish weather so special and why is it so difficult to predict an abrupt change in weather with certainty?
The Irish weather is not too difficult to summarize. A handful of wind, some rain and a gust of sunshine. No, this is not a recipe, but the weather in Ireland. The Irish weather is indeed very varied and offers a little to every kind of weather lover. The only thing that is not very varied is the temperature. With an average annual temperature of ten degrees and the main fluctuation between six and 18 degrees, the Irish weather is rather mild.
The probably most obvious reason for the difficulty to predict Irish weather is the geographical situation of Ireland. Bordering the British island, surrounded by nothing but water and the defenceless orientation of the west coast towards the North Atlantic Ocean. The geographical situation does not exactly play into the cards of meteorologists and makes a correct weather forecast difficult. Particles in the atmosphere, the number of people living in a conurbation and simply the uneven surface of Ireland with its high cliffs on the coast and the flat heartland, all these aspects make it difficult to forecast the weather accurately. Sometimes a precise weather forecast is simply impossible because unexpected events, as the word unexpected describes, can hardly be predicted and are simply unexpected.
Most of the times the weather forecasts we are witnessing are indeed incorrect and inaccurate. Nevertheless, wearing unsuitable clothing regarding specific weather conditions is not always the fault of these experts, it is much more our fault to rely on certain weather reports or apps of international companies like Google or Apple, which, to be honest, have very little to do with a weather forecast. These apps evaluate weather data according to the American weather model, but the Global Forecast System (GFS) is not adapted to more diverse and smaller landscaped countries like Ireland. Therefore, precipitation probabilities are difficult for the user to interpret. Despite this inaccuracy, most people, especially those of the younger generation, rely on these weather forecasts instead of looking for more reliable weather services, as it is more convenient to read the weather on the screen of the smartphone than to search for a reliable weather service or to wait for the weather section while watching the news on TV.
So please don’t complain if the new dress you are wearing for the first time might not be suitable for the windy weather or your brand new white sneakers might not be as white anymore! I warned you! Be prepared for everything in terms of clothing and mood; things never turn out as bad as feared and rarely as good as hoped for. Oh yes, rain is not equal to rain, often it is just a drizzle, which the Irishman calls ‘soft day’. It is not for nothing that the stories of the leprechaun and his pot of gold at the end of the rainbow are known worldwide.
With this tail in mind, remember not only the well-known Irish rain but also the sunshine needed for a rainbow will follow. For this reason, it can be said that the ‘yellow object in the sky’ actually appears more often above the green island than described at the beginning.
Perhaps the most accurate forecast of Irish weather is that “it never rains in a pub”.
Dominic Philippi
Dublin Insight 