August: Mild and Unsettled
After a few dry days at the beginning of August, most of the first three weeks of the month were unsettled with low-pressure located over or nearby Ireland. On the 3rd a low-pressure system and its associated weather fronts moved across the country from the west and dominated for the rest of the first week giving some heavy and occasionally thundery falls of rain or showers. The second week began with a deep area of low pressure, which developed in the sub-tropical Atlantic, moving across the country from the southwest. This gave some very heavy rain or showers with gusty winds for many between the 8th and 10th, with some thunderstorm activity embedded, causing flooding in places. It remained unsettled with periods of rain or showers each day in a mostly westerly airflow for the rest of the second and all of the third week. At the beginning of the fourth week, high pressure developed over mainland Europe and gave us some warm settled weather in a southerly airflow up to the 26th, especially in the Eastern half of the country. A stalled front kept it wet at times in the West. Weather fronts encroached again from the west on the 27th and the remainder of the month reverted to an unsettled pattern with low pressure dominating again, giving some heavy prolonged rain on the 30th in the West and Northwest causing some flooding in places.
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Summer: Cool wet June, dry mild July, wet mild August
The dominant feature of the summer was mostly unsettled weather with low pressure. This was caused by persistent high pressure over Greenland and the far north leading to a negative North Atlantic Oscillation with Ireland positioned on the northern/cool side of the jet stream for most of the time. This was especially the case in June and August. However, during July, the jet stream was weaker lead-ing to a slack flow with some warm settled weather at times. One repeating pattern of the summer, which reoccurred in the final quar-ter of each of the three summer months, was plumes of hot air being drawn northwards in a southerly airflow over Western Europe for several days each time giving record high temperatures to many parts of Western Europe. Ireland was on the western edge of these plumes of hot air to varying degrees, while still being influenced by low pressure in the Atlantic. There were several warm days and nights during each event before Atlantic weather fronts encroached from the west, bringing unsettled weather back across the island.
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