ACCORDING to the old proverb, it is not spring until you can plant your foot upon 12 daisies. This criterion, of course, is only one of many would be harbingers of that elusive season.
Meteorologists, on the other hand, eschew uncertainty, dismiss all doubts, and firmly plump for March 1st. Spring, for them, begins today by definition.
But March is a rough and rowdy, rather adolescent month unsure of itself, and full of bluff and bluster. Now and then it regresses towards its wintry origins, while at other times its lengthening days show promise, and hint at better things to come.
But we can depend upon it to be undependable or as Gerald Manley Hopkins puts' it in his inimitable and well nigh indecipherable way:
And you were a liar, O blue March day.
Bright sun lanced fire in the heavenly bay
But what black Boreas wrecked her? he
Came equipped, deadly electric,
Hailropes hustle and grind their
Heaven gravel? wolf snow, worlds of it wind there?
Make what you will of that, if it were to behave according to the norm this March would see Ireland continue for much of the time under the influence of a regular procession of vigorous depressions, each, following the other across the Atlantic at intervals of 36 hours or so.
All this energy, which gives the month its boisterous reputation, comes from the contrast [which is at a maximum at this time of year the polar region is at its coldest after nearly six months of night, and the equatorial zone is approaching its hottest, with the equinoctial sun directly overhead.
At these latitudes, the increasing warmth of the sun in March causes a sharp drop in the number of frosty days. The air temperature rises, on aver"age, to about 10 or 11 each day.
To set the probable limits on what the current month may bring, it is worth noting that the highest March temperature ever recorded in Ireland was 24 in Dublin in 1965 the lowest, in total contrast, was minus 17 degrees on March 3rd, 1947.
We ought to get more sunshine this month than we did in February about three or four hours a day, compared to the February average of slightly over two. And the rain fall in March, normally between 50 and 100 millimetres in low lying areas, marks a transition between January and February the wettest months and the driest period of the year from April through to June.