RAINFALL - May 2023 To March 2024 - how wet ?
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As I had thought, March 2024 didn't turn out as wet as 2023. It nationally averaged 131.8mm versus 144.7mm in March 2023 but make no mistake, that is still exceptionally wet. Likely the 4th wettest March in the past 45 years with probably 1982 and 2019 also being wetter on a national scale. 2019 averaged 141.4mm on this dataset of 11 stations I use, don't have a figure for 1982 but many individual stations had their wettest on record then.
It was the 2nd consecutive wetter than average month and 7 of the past 9 months have been wetter than average. November was basically near average (with a high average) and January was relatively dry but not especially so. Last May was the last month with an anomaly of at least 20mm below national average. February 2023 was the last very dry month.
July 2023-March 2024 had a national average of 1165.3mm. A typical July-March period would have 875.1mm. That's 133% of average which for national is huge.
If we go from September 2022-March 2024 as that's when the current wet era really started rather than last July, Ireland has averaged 2198.1mm over this 19 month period compared to a typical 1797.7mm and is 122% of average which again is huge. The longer a timeframe of incorporating more data, the harder it gets to get extreme anomalies so 122% is extreme in of itself. This isn't significantly greater than August 2019-February 2021 though which was also exceptionally wet at 2172.3mm.
Photography site - https://www.sryanbruenphoto.com/
Weather photo portfolio - https://sryanbruen.myportfolio.com/weather-1
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Yeah I'm trying to find a reasonable metric of showing it. As you say, the 2019-2021 wet era at least had a very significant dry period of relief (spring 2020), which eventually turned into a hosepipe ban by the second week of June showing that period may have had more intense rain which could have skewed the overall stat.
10-day averages show the spring 2020 period amongst an overall wet era and especially a contrast to February 2020 which is one of our wettest months ever recorded. The May/June 2023 dry spell may have been more "flash" with the most amount of national 10-day averages at 0mm in the past 5 years but it was also much shorter. We have had drier periods like September heatwave, late November/early December and January cold spell. However, these were quite brief and in the case of the latter two, winter evaporative rates are very low making it much more difficult for the ground to dry out. The November/December period was also just relatively drier, it wasn't all that dry - especially here in the east where it was often chilly and damp.
Photography site - https://www.sryanbruenphoto.com/
Weather photo portfolio - https://sryanbruen.myportfolio.com/weather-1
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