Summer 2024 - General Discussion

Horrendous rain. Driving down from Ballinamore to Ardagh and back wasn't great.

"8th of July was the only summers day that had no clouds for 12 hours".. lol, July 2022 and 2023 didn't have even one!

Not even close to the absolute worst summers on record, we've had some truly horrendous ones! As has been mentioned, it feels even worse and tedious given what has gone on before.

Dublin Airport summer data for each summer since 2007 and its respective calculated summer index below. 2024 figures are an estimation using the standard 1991-2020 August and current avg hrs of sun this July to date multiplied by the amount of days left. I have done this as the index would not work otherwise.

Rain days are days with 0.2mm of rain or more. As can be seen, if we were to get an average August hypothetically (neither amazing or horrendous), 2024 has an estimated index of 196 which is actually slightly above that of 2023 but this is down to the number of rain days - both the mean max and total sunshine would be worse than 2023 showing it's not a perfect "objective" measure of looking at summer and the devil is in the detail.

The worst summers 2020, 2012 and 2007 had indexes under 170 whilst the best summers 2018, 2013 and 2022 had indexes above 250.

I've seen a number saying how cloudy this summer has been.

By this point in summer 2020, Dublin Airport had 200.7 hrs of sun. 2024 is running on 244.0 hrs of sun. Not good but significantly better. Not sure how this stacks up historically.

Thanks as always Sryan. You're a wealth of information. And such a valuable member of the forum.

So many people post on here based on (recent) feelings and perceptions. And I get that weather can be subjective. And it's human nature to be prone to recency bias.

But it's so great to have someone with all the stats and statistics to hand.

I'm fed up of 2024 like many here which I vented my frustrations on but you won't see me exaggerating that it's the worst summer of all-time at least based on what has happened so far. It's definitely not though still hasn't been good. Of course August could change all that slightly better or for even worse. We just have to wait and see. Will it be classic Autumngust or will it finally end this mediocrity with at least some excitement or memorable weather?

Whatever the case, no doubt I will try and make the most of it. A good sunrise or sunset is enough to keep me by these days 😂 though the wind can respectfully get lost.

Brilliant post. Sums up alot of scenarios.

Opinions and recollections are always welcomed. Like when I'm doing a historical weather analysis, I am looking for stats, photos and then people's memories of what happened on a local level which the former two may not always show especially with our sparse station network.

I always talk about stats because they do not have the limitation of human memory. They are recorded once and then (likely) saved as long as we live particularly in the digitisation era, maybe less so years back. Then there is also general bias and confirmation bias. Somebody may remember a weather period very differently to someone else due to local variations, short term memory loss, experience or just a different opinion altogether as with say the worst summers above which can be very subjective. That is not to say that stats don't also have their bias. We have seen many times in the modern era where mild nights can skew a month towards significantly warmer than average even though we may not remember it as a warm month. But that can be resolved by looking at the broader details rather than looking at a glass half full view which in this case is the overall mean temperature. This measure is useful for looking at overall trend in temperature over a long time scale but is sometimes not a great teller of how warm or cold a month was in people's experiences where the average daily max temperature would be much more useful - also a calculated average windchill I guess.

Recollections or archives of old media and photographs are useful for looking back when stats are limited. For example, there's not a lot available on the winter of 1947 which we know was the most severe in Irish memory when it got going in the second half of January lasting until mid-March. If you were to look at the individual day to day stats from the limited number of stations, it doesn't seem all that extreme compared to some others we've seen. There were few nights with a minimum temperature beneath -10C, 2010 had plenty of those in January and November/December. And there wasn't a lot of statistical ice days. However, we know the impacts were much worse than what these stats would lead you to believe and there's photographic proof.

1995 really was an epic summer with some superb lightning storms up here in the north in the autumn. I was at college at the time and I remember many hot sunny days. August especially was very sunny and hot.

Last year here in carrick on shannon was the best for thunderstorms we had 8 days back to back I couldn't believe it and I think in total their was 14 or 17 thunder days from May to September

I'd say the past few months are a perfect example of stats not matching the lived experience, May was the 'hottest' on record yet for most people I think it was a fairly forgettable month with lots of grey windy days. June was seemingly around average temp and sunshine wise in Dublin yet perceptively it was again full of unpleasant windy grey days. And summer 2020 might have been worse statistically but we'd just come out of an amazing spring with weeks and weeks of sunshine so we'd already lived a summer of sorts whereas this year there's been nothing but the odd day here and there so it feels worse than it probably is

Great information on Dublin Airport. Thanks again Syranbruen.

Greay, muggy, looks like it's threatening to rain out there. Anyway, the dog couldn't care less what the weather is threatening to do. She wants her walk and a walk she'll get………….14 c N Kildare

16c cloudy. 87% humidity. West Waterford.

I know I speak about it a lot (as it is my local and have the data readily available from already analysing) but try to do others that are more relevant to posters or not sound IMBYism.

It’s a shame Leitrim data is so limited. Believe the only Met station available there that records temperature is Ballinamore which we have to wait months for to come in.

Anyway appropriate that I just woke up to light rain here in Dublin and very dark/gloomy.

I learn a hell of a lot about weather thanks to you. Keep it coming.

Just copped that