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Wettest October in 16 years
07.11.11
by Damian Dowds, Inishowen Independent
LAST month was the wettest October in 16 years in
Inishowen with the Malin Head weather station
recording 177 millimetres (7 inches) of rainfall
during the month.
That seven inches was 50% above the normal amount of
rainfall we can expect here in Inishowen during
October and was the most since 1995.
Met Éireann has 13 weather stations around the
country, and only Valentia in Kerry and Belmullet in
Mayo recorded more rainfall than Malin Head.
The middle of the month was wettest at Malin Head,
while Dublin and the east coast suffered heavy
rainfall later in the month.
Temperatures were also above average at Malin Head,
with a mean temperature of 11.4°C, almost 1°Celsius
above the 30 year average for the peninsula. |
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Malin Head weather station. |
Ground temperatures too
were around 1°C higher than normal, extending the
growing season here into November.
And the extreme weather conditions experienced both
here and abroad are set to continue and become ever
more common.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will
shortly issue a report on changes in the climate
around the world and say that freakish weather, from
record floods in Thailand to severe winters in
Inishowen, are likely to become more common as
global warming takes hold.
Experts on extreme storms have focused more closely
on the increasing numbers of super-heavy rainstorms
and say that this will become more common as the
century progresses and global warming becomes more
pronounced.
Warmer air holds more water and puts more energy
into weather systems, changing the dynamics of
storms and where and how they hit.
Freak flooding incidents, like those experienced in
Ireland last month, will become more common. By the
end of the century, the intense, single-day, heavy
rainstorms that now typically happen only once every
20 years are likely to happen about twice a decade,
the report says.
Temperatures dropped this weekend with dry, sunny
days followed by a plunge in temperatures at night. |
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