Saturday 31 March 2007

March Weather

The weather for March was mild and sunny but with a lot of frosty nights, and very little rain towards the end of the month.

Only 39mm of rain fell this month (Dublin Airport conditions 16km away), we would normally expect to get in the region of 53.5mm, but most of it in the first three weeks. The mean air and soil temperatures for the month were about normal at 6.4 degrees C and 6.2 degrees C respectively. The total amount of solar radiation for the month (intensity of energy from the sun including overcast days) was slightly higher than normal (26680 Joules/sqcm). These average monthly conditions hide fact that the first half of the month was wetter and cloudier and the last 12 days were drier and sunnier than normal.

In the temperature charts above (extracted from the Met Éireann summary) the maximum temperature for Dublin area (blue line) dropped considerably from the 18th to the 21st when all of the precipitation was snow or hail, and there was ground frosts at night throughout the month.

These charts show how little rain came in the latter part of the month and that we only had 4 days where there was more than a light drizzle of rain (blue bars), not enough to really soak into the ground.

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