Mullinahone.net

It will come as no surprise to people to learn that February was a relatively dry month. Of course, we are all conscious of this because of the extremely heavy rainfall that we had in January. In February, 21.9mm of rain fell on 11 of the 28 days. In

January, the figure for rainfall was 192.1mm of rain which fell on 21 of the 31 days. In simple language, there was nine times as much rainfall in January as there was in February.

However, it is not all good news. Last year only 24.4mm of rain fell in February after a very wet January. Look at the way 2008 turned out. It was the wettest year since 2002. Looking at February in isolation, it was one of the drier February's on record and was certainly towards the lower end of the rainfall scale. It was still a long way wetter than the only 2.7mm recorded in February 1986. For those with sharp memories, 1986 was the year Hurricane Charlie arrived in the latter part of August. At the other end of the scale, 175.3mm of rain cascaded down in February 1995 and yet that year turned out to be a year of rather normal rainfall. Maybe February is a maverick month and as is said sometimes in politics, it bucks the trend. When February is dry, the year is wet and when February is wet, the year is rather dry. Taking last months figures into consideration, I certainly hope that that is not the case.