Low temperatures not new
If the forecast for this week is correct, David Small may find the weather recording station in his garden at Drumconnick reaching new lows. In a quarter century of gathering weather data for Met Éireann David has recorded a lowest temperature of 11 degrees Celsius below zero – that was in the millennium year 2000, but it also dropped to -9.7 in 1987, -10.5 in 1995 and -10 in 2002. His average figure is -6.8C and the least cold winter in Cavan since David started recording temperatures in 1987 was 1991, when the temperature didn't dip any lower than -3.2 Celsius. The people of Cavan might be remembering that year fondly now in 2010 as the national broadcaster keeps reminding us on the news how cold it is (and how to cope with it), though this county appears to have escaped the worst of it so far. David's figures for the last few days show -3C on Friday night, -5C on Saturday night, -4.5C on Sunday night and -5C on Monday night. “It's unusual to have these low temperatures this early in the year,†said David, “we normally only see them in December, January or February.†He remembered the winter of 2000 when snow lay on the ground for two weeks from Christmas eve, and like the rest of us, the memory of last winter, when the Arctic conditions seemed to hang around for most of January, is fresh in his mind (the lowest figure he recorded was -9C). David has had a lifelong interest in nature and geography, and as a keen reader of The Irish Times noted that ‘Another Life' columnist Michael Viney was recording weather data. “So I wrote to the met office and offered to record the weather,†said David, “and after a time a man called to the house [to inspect the site] and they gave me a brass rainfall gauge. When they saw that I did it regularly and did it okay, they gave me thermometers and a Stevenson's shield (the white wooden box that contains the thermometers).†David notes the data from the rainfall gauge and five thermometers (including one recording ground temperature) at 9am every day and sends them to Met Éireann (and The Anglo-Celt for publication) every month. For the record – and to make us feel a bit better now – the warmest David has noted it in Cavan is 30C. That was in 1995 and again in 2006 when “there were seven or eight days that the temperature crossed†that threshold. The Met Éireann forecast for today (Wednesday) is: ‘scattered hail, sleet and snow showers, mainly by north and east coasts, otherwise dry with some sunny spells. Freezing fog may linger in places and bitterly cold with temperatures, remaining below freezing where the freezing fog lingers, otherwise struggling to reach between 0 and +2 degrees.' David Small's temperature record 1987 -9.7 1988 -6.0 1989 -4.9 1990 -8.3 1991 -3.2 1992 -6.5 1993 -5.7 1994 -6.5 1995 -10.5 1996 -5.7 1997 -4.5 1998 -5.0 1999 -6.8 2000 -11.0 2001 -8.5 2002 -10.0 2003 -6.5 2004 -7.0 2005 -4.8 2006 -7.5 2007 -7.0 2008 -5.0 2009 -8.0