Gloom spreading eastwards as summer turns into a washout

As I write this piece, Met Eireann - or as some amateur weather forecasters call it 'Mess' or 'Meth' Eireann - is flashing up two alerts: a small craft warning, and a blight warning. And, as Jimmy Cricket used put it: "And there's more, there's more." For Monday, it said that rain in the west and north would continue to spread eastwards in the evening but as it moved, it would tend to weaken. It did indeed spread and we were doused (again) and it did weaken (to drizzle). For the night, it predicted drier and clearer weather (in the north-west) but "elsewhere" (and that means everywhere) there would be further outbreaks of rain and drizzle. And so it came to pass. I'm assuming the old Met didn't want to short-change us and provided an online a map of little old Ireland showing two distinctly blue stripes across it, one of them probably 50km wide and 100 miles long. There were little flashes of yellow in there, too, meaning that the rain is heavier in those parts. How kind. And where are those yellow bits located? Navan, Kells and Trim, with a little bit of Athboy thrown in. In case the online version has got it wrong, I turned on to Gerry Murphy delivering the forecast on RTE 1 television. All I can hear is "rain", although on Thursday it might be in small amounts. Towards the weekend, the winds will come from the north and - you guessed it - there will be more showers. I have a good reason for writing about the weather this week and it has nothing to do with the fact that we are now in the traditional newspaper 'silly season' when there's little else to write about, but because I have come across an intriguing piece written by Peter Cluskey in The Hague for the Irish Times. Peter writes under the headline 'Call for fines for weather forecasters who get it wrong'. It seems that as rain continued to lash much of northern Europe this summer, frustrated tourism chiefs and local councillors in the Netherlands and Belgium claimed incorrect weather forecasts were making the summer washout seem even worse than it is. And it was suggested that forecasters who got it wrong should have fines imposed on them. It appears it has reached the stage where the Belgian hotel and restaurant association are threatening to sue the national meteorological service. Could it even reach the stage where we haul some of our best-known celebrity weatherpersons before the local judge? The hapless weatherman or woman (preferably Jean Byrne looking like she's just emptied her tinfoil drawer) is in the dock. "I put it to you that, on last Monday night, you said there would be 'generous sunny spells' in Ballinabrackey. In fact, the Ballinabrackians were washed out of it with 80mm of what we might call precipitation. What do you say to that?" "Guilty as charged, M'Lud....but, in mitigation, I said that there would be occasional generous sunny spells. And how would I know they were going to arrive on Wednesday? In any case, what do you think of my sparkly frock?" Pity the poor forecaster. Listening to former TV weatherman John Eagleton (on an RTE programme 'Weather Permitting') last week talking about the "relentless psychological pressure" of having to deliver bad weather news to the public for days on end would take blood from a stone. No wonder he decided to leave the screen and retreated to the Met Centre back rooms where he continued his craft of forecasting the weather. And what about poor old Michael Fish, the weatherman who appeared on BBC TV on a fateful night in October 1987 and apparently said "Earlier on today, apparently, a woman rang the BBC and said she had heard that there was a hurricane on the way. Well, if you are watching, don't worry, there isn't." In the early hours of 16th October, winds reaching 122mph ripped across the south-eastern corner of England, taking the sleeping nation by surprise, killing 18 people and uprooting 15 million trees. It was the worst storm since 1703. If Fish did, in fact, say what he was purported to have said, he might have been in for a huge fine from a hypothetical judge. Indeed, he might well have said "Not me, Gov", because he later claimed he wasn't even on duty that night. I think I have a solution to the monitoring of these forecasting miscreants. We will create a new offence of 'Failure to forecast sun' under the Meteorological Forecasting Act, 2012. And for punishment, we'll send them to Clew Bay for three months of the summer to see what it's like to sit under sheets of relentless rain. Only joking...