Some Summer

WHEN IT COMES to the weather, people's memories seem to let them down badly. Right now, while the geneeral public suffers under the illusion that this is the worst summer since the Flood, the Meteorological Office is calmly churning out statistics to prove us all wrong.

It is true that average temperatures and the duration of sunshine have been below normal over most of the country, but so has the amount of rainfall. It seems as if grey skies and fond memorries of the summers of 1975 and 1976 have combined to create a massive sense of grievance totally unsupported by the statistical evidence.

So, how bad has it been so far?

Half way through the summer, Dubblin has had only 200 hours of bright sunshine, the dullest start since 1955. In June, July and August, 1976, the figure was 550 hours. The best summer ever recorded had a scorching 680 hours but that was way back in 1887.

This year's temperatures are down by one or two degrees, depending on where you live, but there have been lots of cool summers. Perhaps we still haven't recovered from 1976, which gave us the hottest three months ever recorded.

With barely 3.5 inches of rainfall, the summer of 1976 was also dry, although the record of just less than 2.5 inches has stood since 1887. Half way through this summer, we've already had about three inches. Damp, but nothing to complain about if you remember 1958 when we had 17 inches of rain through the summer.

The weathermen are being very cool about the whole business, implying that they have expected something like this for months. In fact, long range weatherrforecasting seems to be regarded .by Irish meteorologists as the professional equivalent of Russian roulette, and the forecasts are a mixture of faith, hope, and diplomacy, with enough lattitude to cover all possibilities. Those hail showwers at the end of June must have irritatted a new era in long range forecast writting.

Farmers, of course, have got their problems. Blight, mildew, septoria, and rhynchosporium (God preserve us) are just a few of the threats delivered by damp, cloudy weather. According to the Department of Agriculture, if any crops actually survive these scourges, harvestting is likely to be late, but quality and yields might be better than after a warm, dry summer.