July weather

Last week, I promised my readers in  Connecticut and Kamchatka that I'd give them a definitive report on the rainfall in Ireland this last July.  Met Eireann have published the stats:

You can see that we had a drought (15 days with less than 0.2mm of rain) in the middle of July, but many areas of the country had slashing thunderstorms 20/07-31/07 and some of them have had above average rainfall for the month.  The two stations that bracket us suggest we had about 50% of the average July rainfall.  

We were off-site on the South coast visiting Pat the Salt yesterday and it was sunny there all day.  When we got home in the last of the light, I could see that our lane had taken a drubbing.  So I was out as soon as it was light enough to distinguish a white from a black thread with a shovel to repair the damaged berms and clean out the drain.  This arvo, I noted that the wheel-barrow had filled with 160mm of rain in the last 48 hours.  Allowing for the sloping sides, that says we had 80mm of rain in two days: most of it in the couple of hours before we returned home.  That's a month's rain in a very sort period and that's what does damage.  So let us give thanks we don't live on a hillside in, say, Assam where they got more than 500mm rain (117% average) in July.