Hot Spell - Saturday 16th July onwards

The summers of 1995, 2013, 2018 and even July 2021 were great but those were Azores Highs sitting over us for at least a week or more (much more in 1995) but we relied on home grown heat and sea breezes were a thing with generally +10 to +16 uppers so usual places like Shannon and Mt Dillon would get to 30C or a touch higher. Todays event was a perfect alignment involving low pressure and a toasty express from Algeria crossing a particularly boiling Spain to achieve todays result. It was a plume event and not the typical high pressure scenario in previous decent summers. 30C over a large part of Leinster hasn't really happened before because today's setup was so rare and sea breezes were minimal combined with these extreme uppers. Up to this year I would say Ireland never gets plumes, they always go north and then swing north-eastwards over SE UK/London and sweep up the North sea in Scandi, avoiding Ireland alltogether. Today was unique, the sun, moon and stars all aligned to get us to today. The heat today was exceptional in Leinster and it is also exceptional that I have recorded 3 days this week with 27C or more and possibly still might bag another 27C tomorrow if we're lucky. For Meath/Dublin at least this spell of weather this July has far exceeded any of the years mentioned above for high twenties and low 30s.

If we had an extra day to play with tomorrow like England has, I'm pretty sure that 33.3C would be smashed tomorrow but unfortunately we lose the uppers quickly tomorrow and today was our only chance.

A one day wonder, once in a lifetime chance for Leinster. The Atlantic will be back in business from tomorrow i'm afraid.

Majority of hot spells going forward will be back to what we usually get, Azores high and home grown heat for a few days or possibly a week, maybe the odd weak transitional swipe with heat from the south lasting a day.

30C will happen most summers for a day or so but that will be from the typical Azores high scenario of sea breezes limiting high temperatures to areas well inland and western hotspots like Shannon and Mt Dillon. Majority of our warm to hot spells have south-easterly or easterly wind directions from them and Leinster struggles with the temperatures in these scenarios where 24 to 28C is the most we get in this situations, and temperatures slide away quickly after 7pm while western areas stay a bit toastier into the evening.