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Best summer in memory

124

Comments

  • Registered Users Posts: 6,016 ✭✭✭Elmer Blooker


    A lovely spring and first half of June and dire after that. What I remember about last August was rotting mouldy flowers in the garden in low temperatures and rain.

    Someone mentioned 1887 a few posts back 😁 but I'll go back a decade to 1878 which was a very similar summer to 1976 but not as dry.

    What a year that was! Look at the mean temps for the following winter (78/79) at the Phoenix Park: Nov 3.2c, Dec -0.1, Jan 1.2c.

    That December was colder to any month in 1917, 1947 or 1963.



  • Registered Users Posts: 379 ✭✭Tilden Katz


    It was a hosepipe ban accompanied by cloudy gloom for the most part. The absolute worst of all worlds. The actual sunny weather was pretty short-lived. No water, yellowing grass but not even the ingredient to make it worth it. 2018’s sunny spell wasn’t long enough to make it a vintage summer.


    Much like I’ve seen August 2003 mentioned a few times. Oh, it was hot all right… and seriously hazy every day in Dublin. I remember the torture because my parents spent most of that month in the UK on their holliers with friends in the south midlands. In the UK, the temperature was being matched by sun every day and temperature records were being neared or broken almost daily in various parts of the UK.


    Meanwhile, we were getting high 20s haze. Not like, flithery, high haze that is basically sunny but proper gloom. The most oppressive weather I’ve experienced in Ireland. 2006’s spell ended like that (probably the highest humidity ever at the end of the spell but was at least the weather impressive for a good, solid period.)



  • Registered Users Posts: 379 ✭✭Tilden Katz


    I think you’re right! I’m not mixing them up personally though. That first lockdown period was pleasant and sunny but too early to make a vintage summer. The weather was overall disappointing for a summer where we really needed the stars to align as none of us was going anywhere.



  • Registered Users Posts: 13,477 ✭✭✭✭sryanbruen


    2020 was spring, not summer. The actual summer period (meteorologically, June, July and August) was dreadful and the worst I have experienced. Summer 2020 in a few words - cloud, cloud, cloud.

    The amount of misinformation in this thread is funny to be honest. June 2013 started off terribly.. it didn't unless you hate day after day of sunshine that is. Summer 1996 was pretty good up until August by Irish standards with June and July both providing lovely sunny periods mid-month and mixed weather either side but no washouts.

    May to July 2018 was comparable to the sunniest summers on record in Dublin, the visibility was excellent in late June in particular with very low humidity, bags of sunshine, high temperatures; true continental feel to the weather. I know the west had it quite poor in July 2018 after first few days whilst August was poor everywhere.



  • Registered Users Posts: 16,820 ✭✭✭✭Sleeper12


    Nice & all as the last 10 days to 2 weeks have been they haven't a patch on the 1995 & 1976 heat waves.

    There was a Harp ad with the line something like "you could fry an egg, if you had an egg that is". To me this sums up 1976 to a T.



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  • Registered Users Posts: 379 ✭✭Tilden Katz


    When you’ve experienced a long, hot summer like 1995 (or 1976 I understand), those sunny spells are nice but will always fall short. As has been pointed out, 1995 did see some cloudy spells but basically for the month of August and much of June and July, you didn’t pray for good weather, it was an expectation. I think because temperature records weren’t readily broken, people who didn’t experience it dismiss it. But when you’re enjoying your umpteenth day in the normally notoriously baltic open air pool of your hometown (that struggles to stay open pretty much every summer), you know it’s good and you don’t really care that 30°C wasn’t hit. Experientially, that summer is peerless for me. I’ve spent 26 years waiting for a repeat.


    The June 2013 sun was great but just not that long a spell. 1996 was a nothing summer.



  • Registered Users Posts: 219 ✭✭Halenvaneddie


    1995



  • Registered Users Posts: 13,477 ✭✭✭✭sryanbruen


    Yeah I understand everything you said. I don't downplay just how good of a summer 1995 was. It was the best Irish summer in living memory going by people's recollections as well as what the statistics have to say. Not many summers can say it was the warmest, driest and sunniest on record all in one season. Just wish I could have experienced it being brought into this world 5 years later.



  • Registered Users Posts: 593 ✭✭✭Waldo99


    ‘76



  • Registered Users Posts: 6,235 ✭✭✭Oneiric 3


    Sorry Syran but I have to contradict one point you made here regarding June 2013. It started off very nice here in this part of the country. I remember because we got our dog (a puppy at the time) during this fine spell, and a fine spell it was as the air mass and feel of the air, the look of the sky (dark steel blue) etc was much better than anything the following July brought, which, like this current spell, was just pure hell for me.

    New Moon



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  • Registered Users Posts: 13,477 ✭✭✭✭sryanbruen


    That doesn't contradict anything I said Oneiric 3, I meant to put "June 2013 started terribly" in quotations because it was what another poster in this thread said. It was very nice indeed, pure blue skies day after day and it wasn't that warm, just pleasant. That is going by stats at least as I actually don't remember it too well from my own recollections which is a bit odd for me.



  • Registered Users Posts: 6,235 ✭✭✭Oneiric 3


    Sorry again Syran, I misread your post and that particular line.. how I did I'm not quite sure. The heat has finally beaten and wore me down it seems, so much so that I can now physically see it as it manifests itself into strange, dark forms.

    New Moon



  • Registered Users Posts: 6,191 ✭✭✭RandomViewer


    95 is the one I remember, seemed to be dry for months



  • Registered Users Posts: 6,191 ✭✭✭RandomViewer


    Would this be the now considered Dutch swimmer?



  • Posts: 0 ✭✭[Deleted User]


    I remember the 1995 heatwave because i made my communion in June/July of that year and we all had black blazers on. The one a few years back, Couldn't been the 2018 when it hardly rained for three months and the grass was all going yellow. And then only a week ago when i came out of a shopping centre and walked out in the heat here it felt like opening an oven when you get that blast of heat.



  • Registered Users Posts: 12,268 ✭✭✭✭bodhrandude


    I remember them all, 1976: Was eleven years old, we lived in Glasgow in a semidetached house with a first floor, I remember having water fights with my friends and neighbours, we had the vantage point of the first floor, great memories. 1995: Was a fully fledged bodhran player by then, playing loads of sessions in Galway, doing all the fleadhs and I remember the heat wave particularly at the Fleadh Cheoil at Listowel and at the start of August with the Ballyshannon Folk Festival. 2006: Remember it absolutely hot when I went to visit the sister in Bandon, Cork in August and September. 2013: Worked loads of festivals, Life, Body&Soul and Electric Picnic, weather brilliant for each of them. 2018: Posters mentioning Body&Soul festival, I was at that one too and got burnt to a crisp, I found Chronnix's style of Jamaican fried reggae was perfectly apt as a headliner closer and it did feel like we were in Jamaica with gorgeous weather. One of my worst summers, it seems no one has noted here was 2016, I was working at 8 different festivals in Ireland that year and each one was a downpour.

    If you want to get into it, you got to get out of it. (Hawkwind 1982)



  • Registered Users Posts: 1,485 ✭✭✭Billcarson


    As warm as it was ,it was great that it wasn't accompanied by high humidity. I don't even think the nights were all that oppressive either compared to other warm summers.

    I think it was a fairly dry year overall certainly the 2nd half of the year.

    Winter 95/96 was a cold often dry winter.



  • Registered Users Posts: 6,191 ✭✭✭RandomViewer


    Big frost on Stephens night, minus 10-15, lots of places shut for Christmas, big mess



  • Registered Users Posts: 7,796 ✭✭✭Calibos


    Summer 2014 doesn't often get mentioned in the same breath as 2013 because for most of the country it was warm but dull. However along the East Coastal Margins it was nearly as good as 2013.

    This happened by noon most days. ie. Convection clouded out most of the country from noon onwards but that coastal strip along the east coast always seemed to stay clear all day due to the maritime influence I assume. Day after day I witnessed it when looking at the Sat animations.




  • Registered Users Posts: 5,643 ✭✭✭storker


    1976, 1995, 2018



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  • Registered Users Posts: 1,474 ✭✭✭Mimon


    Summer 1995 like Blur stood the test of time better than any rivals (Born in 1977 so maybe conceived during 1976 heatwave so will give that one some dues)



  • Registered Users Posts: 1,474 ✭✭✭Mimon


    Had the best tan every though last year at that time as was off having caught Covid and had nothing to do but lie in the garden from morning until evening.

    This spell reminds me of Spanish midsummer heat where you have to avoid it for the hottest hours of the day and enjoy the sun in the evenings.



  • Registered Users Posts: 379 ✭✭Tilden Katz


    I know but keep the faith. It will happen! 😇 🙏



  • Registered Users Posts: 3 Vipsy


    1995. It was hot for what seemed like months. Balmy nights. I was only 21 back then. It was one hell of a summer!



  • Registered Users Posts: 379 ✭✭Tilden Katz


    The humidity built to a scary cresendo in 2006 indeed. I recall being on a rush hour evening bus in Dublin just before the heatwave spell broke in thunder and there was an atmosphere of menace on the bus. I couldn’t wait for my stop to arrive. I’m being deadly serious. It really felt like something might kick off. Everybody was in foul humour, completely drained. I believe those stats you hear about crime rising by a certain percentage with every degree of temperature higher. I’ve never experienced anything like that atmosphere since. 😳



  • Registered Users Posts: 3,236 ✭✭✭Dr. Kenneth Noisewater


    1995.

    2006 was a pretty good one too but, as I was working age by then, I didn't get to soak it up the way I did as a 10 year old in 1995. It was a full summer of almost exclusively long, sunny days where we spent hours playing football on the neighbourhood lawns. My mother bought me a tent that summer and we slept outside pretty much every night. I'll never forget my mother telling me when it was just starting that the next day was to be 27 degrees. I had never even contemplated that we could have temperatures like that, but it was only the beginning!



  • Registered Users Posts: 6,834 ✭✭✭pauldry


    Top 10 Summers

    1. 1995 (coz I remember it)
    2. 1976
    3. 2018
    4. 1983
    5. 2006
    6. 1984
    7. 2013
    8. 1989
    9. 2021 (for this heatwave alone)
    10. 1887! (I dont remember it)


  • Posts: 0 [Deleted User]


    One thing you'd notice that unless it was the truly long epic summers of 1976 and 1995, some people will dispute that a hot Irish summer had any good weather at all, I remember people disputing that 2006 was a good summer, it was no 95 o/c but it has heaven compared to bloody 2008/9/11/12/15



  • Registered Users Posts: 379 ✭✭Tilden Katz


    Well, I buried my grandmother in summer 2012 in high 20s temperatures. Her last few days and the funeral period were sweltering and sunny where I was and in much of the country. (I remember this vividly because she was waked at home and there were... logistical and storage issues, shall we say). A period of about a week in May 2012. So you can see why a week or so of weather wouldn't be considered vintage by many if the rest of the season is so bad. Do you have any recollection of good weather in summer 2012?



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  • Registered Users Posts: 6,833 ✭✭✭circadian


    I remember a few good spells in the northwest several years running from about 92-95 with 94/95 having extended hot sunny weather.


    2018 another mention, especially after the epic snowstorm that came a mere few weeks beforehand.



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