IF you have sunny memories of summer 1996, they will almost certainly be based on the short spells of excellent weather that came along regularly mid month.
June and July, especially, started and ended wet and breezy, but for a brief interlude in the middle of each month warm, dry and sunny conditions became established for a week or so. August brought heavy downpours to many areas, but had a sufficient number of "pet days" to make the overall pattern tolerable.
The preliminary figures from Met Eireann's 13 weather observing stations throughout the State suggest a summer that was pretty typical for Ireland and, if anything, slightly better than the average.
June began with a continuation of the cool, rather wet and breezy weather that characterised spring, but summer as a whole was a little warmer and sunnier than normal, even if nothing like as remarkable in these respects as 1995.
It was also drier than usual, except in the extreme north and in the far south. And the number of "wet days" - days with a significant amount of rain, the equivalent, say, of at least a noticeable shower - ranged from 26 at Rosslare and Cork Airport to 39 at Belmullet; again rather typical figures for an Irish summer.
According to the figures, the average temperature for the three months of June, July and August was about half a degree above the norm, a very modest excess compared to the 2 above average registered in 1995, but indicating a relatively warm summer.
The hottest day of the season, if you can remember it, was Sunday, June 16th, when the thermometer tipped 27 C at Shannon Airport and close to that at other places country wide. And June, too, provided the sunniest conditions, with over 15 hours per day during the good spell in the middle of that month.
Irish summers in general might be said to lend credence to A.E. Housman's remark that "the normal condition of mankind is one of just tolerable discomfort". To experience a spell of hot, sunny weather, we have to depend on a break, or an anomaly, in the usual pressure regime over the North Atlantic.
The classic pattern consists of an area of low pressure in the vicinity of Iceland, and a large anticyclone north of the Azores; in between lies a zone of predominantly westerly winds, embedded in which are the troublesome families of depressions which bring us fresh winds and rain at regular intervals of 36 or 48 hours. This, indeed, was the pattern which pertained throughout most of the last three months.
Now and again, however, it happens that the stream of winds high above our heads "steers" the depressions on a more northerly track, closer to Iceland and Norway, "and their absence allows the Azores high pressure area to bulge northwards and encompass Ireland.
This happened notably twice this year, in mid June and mid July, and the warm sunny conditions associated with the high barometer were the saving graces of summer 1996.
But both good spells were short. Some meteorologists believe Irish summers very often settle down by about mid July into some persistent character; either mostly wet and windy, or mostly dry and sunny.
Once the general character of the weather has become established in this way, they say, it tends to persist until near the end of August, at which time there is frequently a change to weather of a different kind. But this did not happen this year: it was as if 1996 just could not quite make up its mind.
The end result was a summer season with a mix of weather and very few "spectaculars", either good or bad. To find entries for the record books we will have to look elsewhere than through the pedestrian readings of the current year.
It has been, in fact, an irresolute, fickle, indecisive kind of summer, with none of the benign constancy so evident in its predecessor of a year ago, not yet the killjoy determination of, say, 1985 or 1986.
It was nondescript, good in spots, like the curate's egg; it was, in short, an Irish summer ordinaire.