McHugh's Miscellany - Donegal's heat reflecting a terrible beauty being born
Donegal thermostats soared over the month of June, dipping into heatwave territory in the middle of the month, but then the rain came, the thunderstorms struck and that humidity and those balmy night temperatures followed.
July and August could be delightfully decent or downright disastrous depending on the alliteration which will triumph.
And it looks like these weather patterns will linger long into the future as climate change is truly upon us.
Donegal and Ireland will not be spared the same weather extremities that are consistently causing chaos from the UK, through to France, Spain, Portugal and in every direction.
You only need to look at the extreme weather being experienced in the United States with so-called “heat domes” notching up a blistering 43C on Texan thermometers.
This is expected to envelop other states in the days and weeks ahead, putting huge strains on the electricity networks.
In the UK, the Met Office is predicting that June 2023 is on track to be the hottest June on record in a series which goes back to 1884.
The highest temperature ever recorded in the North was just across the Donegal border where 31.3C was recorded at Castlederg, Co Tyrone in July of 2021 - two summers ago!.
But we were all warned about this and it appears that remedial action now, is a case of closing the door after the horse has bolted, and then pretending that the horse is still in the shed.
We get encouraged to buy solar panels, while in other parts of the world a new coal mine opens.
Temperatures are usually cooler in Donegal, mainly due to its coastal location with sea fog and sea breezes off the coast bring relief.
Temperatures here need to rise above 25 degrees or over for a consecutive five day period, before the term 'heatwave’ could be applied, but we still have July and August to contend with.
But there are anomalies as with the 25.8C recorded in Glenties on April 26, 1984.
The hottest period of the day is usually between 11am and 3pm on any particular day.
“The sun does not heat the air, the sun heats the ground and then heats the air . . . and that is why we deal with the shaded air temperatures,” I was told by Met Éireann.
This also explains why people often observe higher temperature readings when they initially turn out their cars in warm weather, than the actual temperature.
In 2021, 28.8C was recorded at Finner on Friday, July 26. Malin reached 23.5C on Thursday, July 25, 2021.
In June of 2018 Finner Camp weather station recorded a high of 29.4C, so we still have a bit to go yet this summer and no doubt, in East Donegal it was warmer still..
This June 14, we managed 26.4C and 26.3C, only nudging in the direction of what could lie ahead for us all in Tir Chonaill, if not before the end of this summer, certainly over the next couple of years.
Next thing you know, they will be adding names to heatwaves as well as storms.
And when sun drenched Donegal readers of the future look back on these current “cool” summer temperatures, they will come to realise that we were still sleepwalking ourselves through 2023 in the vain hope that weather patterns would continue as normal into the future, despite the multiple warnings . . .