THE comparative rarity of warm sunny weather here in Ireland requires that it be treated with a great reverence. Its enjoyment assumes the ritual of a sacrificial offering, decreed by an ethical principal that has all the axiomatic moral force of the Kantian "categorical imperative". All other activities must cease to facilitate the act of homage; the advent of a sunny spell, in the words of the great philosopher himself, "commands a certain conduct immediately, without having as its condition any other purpose to be attained by it".
Statistics tell us that June is a likely time for the meteorological muezzin to be heard. Typically it provides an average of six hours of sunshine per day over most of Ireland, and more than seven hours in parts of the aptly named "sunny south east". And as you might expect with all this sun, average rainfall figures are comparatively low, allowing June the accolade as the driest month of the year in many parts of the country.
The highest air temperature ever recorded in Ireland occurred in June - 33 C in Kilkenny on the 26th, in 1887. The normal June, however, is less spectacular in terms of temperature; the average maximum in the afternoons is around 19 C, and only relatively rarely does the thermometer creep above 25 C. Sea temperatures around the coast climb to about 12 C during the month, still two degrees short of their peak of 14 normally reached by late August.
If you examine the records very closely, there are indications that on average the earlier part of June is rather more pleasant than the period from about the 20th onwards. The last week or so of the month often sees a return to predominantly westerly winds, with a succession of weak fronts advancing at regular intervals from the Atlantic. This is in contrast to the easterly winds or anticyclonic conditions which are often experienced before that time - and which, indeed, have been much in evidence of late.
On the Continent this change in the character of the weather is sometimes referred to as the onset of the "European monsoon - an analogy with the very much more dramatic phenomenon which is a regular feature of the climate of India and SouthEast Asia. While the deterioration may sometimes be a cause of slight regret, it does at least allow normal life and its associated activities to resume. As the writer Logan Pearsall Smith succinctly put it: "Thank heavens the sun has gone in, and I don't have to go out and enjoy it!"