Give me Irish weather any time over heatwave America - Cool and wet beats hot and humid anytime in my books
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By some measures it is the wettest summer in Ireland since 1909 and real records began.
I wish I was there.
I spoke to my brother in Drogheda, County Louth, thirty miles north of Dublin on Friday night.
“Three months worth of rain fell in a week “ he told me in that Irish way that mixes resignation with a perverse pride in being able to endure it.
Of course I just got back from there and know somewhat of what he is talking about.
But I’d still prefer it there to the weather here at the moment.
There is something about my Irish skin that overheats like an expanding boiler when the temperatures move north of about 80 degrees.
Here in the Northeast we have had as high as 97 and 98 degrees in this past week.
Personally it is insufferable. Give me wet and rainy Ireland anytime, and a grey dawn breaking no matter how depressing it seems.
Sun burns me up, mosquitoes tee off to attack that nice white Irish skin they treat like a caviar feast. I feel irritable and miserable and like a snapping turtle when people annoy me.
Give me Ireland. The days I was there it was not constant rain, the really depressing kind. It was rain sunshine, rain, sunshine. It stayed bright until 11 o’clock dear reader.
I felt right at home.
The Irish Times forecast for four days in advance was hilarious. Everyday was Groundhog Day. It was early morning fog followed by rain, followed by patches of sun followed by rain again. If this was a movie Ireland was on its tenth sequel by this point in its summer.
Actually, the best place I ever lived was San Francisco where I parked myself in the fog-shrouded Sunset district for about six years. The cool all enveloping fog, keeping temperatures in the mid fifties to sixty was invigorating,
If I wanted sun -- which I didn’t -- I only had to drive a few miles.
In winter if I wanted snow I only had to drive to Tahoe on the Nevada border. Of course, I ended up unhappy there --- too perfect for an Irish Catholic boy.
So I took myself off to New York, land of white hot summers and deep freeze winters.
Every year I ask the same question --- what did people do before air conditioning especially on humid high summer days like now?
I don’t know but they were better men and women than me to survive it.
Which is why I want the grey mist and the sky and the wind’s whip, and an invigorating walk on a beach, not this soulless, humid, huff and puff, helter swelter summer we have here.
Irish weather? -- perfect for me.
Bring it on.
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