It's an ill wind etc. And the balmy breeze that brought the fine reddish-brown dust of the Sahara desert to our shores has sparked a mini-boom in carwashes.
Service stations around the country have reported an upsurge in demand because the wind-blown sands of north Africa look a lot less exciting by the time they have travelled across Europe to land on the roofs and bonnets of the nation's saloons and hatchbacks.
"The place is really busy," said Karen McMullen, assistant manager of the Statoil station at the Omni centre in Swords, Co Dublin. "You expect it on Saturday and Sunday but even on Thursday and Friday this week the queue for the drive-through has been miles long. It's unbelievable."
Across the city the Texaco service station in Deansgrange is just as busy, it seems. "We've had far more cars in this weekend than at any other time," said assistant manager Robert English.
Down south the demand has been more modest. "There is a small upsurge," said Liam Tracey, of Sean O'Callaghan's service station in Ballyvolane, Co Cork. He noticed mostly owners of newer cars coming in for a wash. "I think the dust seems to be more noticeable on newer, shinier cars," he said.
But the boom has bust, or so it seems, for cooler weather is on the way, according to Met Eireann.
A cold front was moving across the country yesterday and last night, introducing cooler temperatures, closer to normal for the time of year. "If we didn't have this very mild weather we would say it will be a nice week ahead," says meteorologist Deirdre Lowe.
Temperatures in the early part of this week will fall to the more normal 8 to 11 degrees Celsius after an early summerish high of 16 degrees in Dublin yesterday.
Ms Lowe said an anti-cyclone or area of high pressure over Europe acted like "a lid on the atmosphere", preventing the dust from the Saharan sandstorms dispersing at high altitude. Instead, it was trapped and carried across Europe until released by drizzle and rain.
This unusual burst of mild weather produced record plant growth. An IFA cereal farmer John O'Mahony reckons winter crops have grown at twice the normal rate in the past fortnight. "It means we might be working harder sooner," he said, with fertilising and weed control. According to Mr O'Mahony, who farms in West Waterford, winter crops such as wheat, barley and oats are quite resilient to adverse weather.
It's a different scenario for fruit farmers. Apple-growers like Olan McNeece of Boyne Grove Fruit Farms in Drogheda would ideally like a "really cold snap". He grows mainly Bramley apples, and mild weather brings on early blossoms, reducing the tree's resistance to frost and damaging the young fruit. "The tree needs a good hard winter to literally send it into hibernation."
