Flooding, forecasts and phenology – it’s hard to keep up with this weather

THE colour of Valentine’s weekend this year was not red but white as the snow that teased us for days finally, if briefly, spread its embrace across most of the country.

A day later and the number one on the thermometer shot up to 11 degrees – a swing that usually separates seasons, not days.

Six days on and the weather warnings were back. Not for snow this time, nor for a spring heatwave, but for wild winds and the heaviest dump of rainfall so far in a year that, despite its newness, has already seen plenty.

But never fear – there’s a high-pressure system due on Thursday so there will be blue skies again, only this time they come not with warmth but with a likelihood of frost and ice.

We haven’t even mentioned the fact that January began with sleet and snow – or graupel, as we were corrected – and ended with pounding winds. Weather may be the nation’s favourite conversation starter but it’s becoming exhausting trying to keep up.

Looking beyond our own rain-streaked windows to the wider world makes it all the more bewildering. When it’s freezing turtles in Texas but double digits in Tralee, it’s hard to fathom what’s going on. Increasingly, the question is being asked whether it’s just the weather earning its reputation as changeable or whether climate change is to blame.

The answer is a bit of both. To put some perspective on it, February in Ireland is no stranger to daffodil benders. A Met Éireann analysis of February storms reminds us that Storm Ciara drenched us in 2020, Storm Erik battered us in 2019 and Storm Darwin lashed us in 2014. But February is generally, or at least used to be, one of the drier of the cold months so the current rainfall is somewhat out of character.

Keith Lambkin, senior climatologist with Met Éireann, is less concerned with the day-to-day swings that fascinate and infuriate most of us who are just trying to plan a daily walk than he is with decade-to-decade changes.

“You can look too closely at one short period in Irish weather and read significance into it that isn’t there. Rain, wind, snow and sun can all follow each other very closely here,” he says.

“What is significant is the pattern we have seen developing over the decades and what it is telling us very clearly is that temperature is increasing, and that brings more profound changes.”

If graupel was last month’s new word, this one’s is phenology. Phenology is the study of plant and animal life-cycle events and how they are influenced by variations in season and climate.

Keith says the phenological research carried out by his colleagues in Met Éireann and in other scientific bodies is yielding strong results.

“People are out on the ground looking at the plants and watching for the buds. Temperature change is not just in the numbers, it’s in the trees – February is getting warmer and spring is arriving earlier.”