A Hot, Hot Summer
By Niall O’Dowd

DUBLIN – It has been an endless summer here in Ireland. Long, lazy days of sunshine are followed by balmy nights. 

The locals hardly know how to treat this incredible climate change. Given the wet and stormy summer on the East Coast of the U.S., it appears that the normal weather patterns of the American continent and Ireland have been reversed.

Recently I took a walk on Bettystown beach in Co. Meath at six in the morning. Usually at such a time you need to be well bundled up against the breeze which whips in off the Irish Sea. The idea of going swimming would be utterly ludicrous and you would be laughed at for even suggesting it.

This morning, however, I saw holiday makers plunging into the placid sea while others walked the beach in their swimwear. You had to look twice to make sure you were not hallucinating. You might spend your life and never see that sight again.

Later in the day, on that same beach many of the young women were wearing skimpy bikini outfits, usually locked securely away until it is time to take that rare Spanish sun holiday. Long lines at the ice cream vans and men with hankies tied neatly on their heads to protect against the sun gave it all a surreal air.

The weather has been so good that one organic farmer stated that he needs to place sun block on his pigs because the sun’s rays are damaging their sensitive skin. It is the kind of silly season story that could only run in Ireland. That same farmer, Hugh Robson in Co. Clare, was also quoted as saying he had also to protect his ponies’ noses from the sunshine with cream

And so it has been, for day after day. The complaints are not how cold it is, but why the concept of air conditioning is still so foreign in the country. What Irish people of course, consider sweltering would hardly raise an eyebrow in the U.S.

Indeed, I arrived just 48 hours after the New York blackout. Ireland’s dry heat, even though it was in the 80s, was a welcome balm after the night and day from hell in sweaty New York. 

The locals, of course, are enchanted with the whole experience. They think they have died and ended up in the Mediterranean. I heard global warming being quietly praised as the reason for the extraordinary conditions, very politically incorrect but a widespread view all the same.

There is no doubt that if they had the weather like this every summer Ireland would be among the most popular tourist destinations on earth. If you combine the wit and wisdom, the extraordinary beauty, and then throw in good weather you would be as close to paradise as you could find in this world.

Weather is a massive priority in Ireland. Indeed, Ireland has a history of watching weather more than any country on earth. That is an understandable priority when you can experience all four seasons in one day, as any frequent visitor can tell you.

It is a dominant focus of discussion here. Unlike in the U.S., where we can predict with reasonable certainty how a season is going to be, there is no such science in Ireland.

Situated as it is on the western approach to Europe, it is the first to feel the Atlantic storms that often batter its coastlines. 

High mountain ranges ensure that the low-lying clouds spill their rain soon after hitting land. The old joke that it rains twice a week in Ireland, once for three days and then for four days, can sometimes ring very true.

Not this summer, however. The entire population has been soaking up the extraordinary conditions. Fortunately it is not as hot as other European countries, which is just as well, as an estimated 10,000 have died in France in their heat wave.

Of course the fine weather will come to an end sometime soon, though it was giving no signs of it at least through the end of August. We often romanticize those wonderful summers of childhood when the sun seemed to shine eternally and the rains never came. 

There will now be a generation of young Irish who can recall for their grandchildren the summer of 2003, when the sun split the rocks and all seemed right with the world.