What's behind Ireland's epic year of weather?
Darren McAffrey recounts a bizarre nine months in which he has reported on historic rain, snow and sunshine on the Emerald Isle.
Wednesday 4 July 2018 11:46, UK
What the flip is going on? I have become a weather reporter!
It has never been a career goal, but in Ireland it is the story that just will not go away.
The country may experience four seasons in any given day, but in the last nine months has suffered three once-in-a-generation weather events.
We had the hurricane-force Storm Ophelia, which brought wind speeds of 150kmph, hitting the south and west of Ireland, sadly killing three people and causing over £1bn of damage.
It proved to be the worst storm to hit the country since 1961.
By March, it was snow that Ireland had to contend with - and a lot of it.
Storm Emma brought seven-foot snow drifts, cut power to hundreds of thousands of homes, and essentially shut the entire country down for three days.
It was the heaviest snowfall seen here since 1982.
And now in early July, Ireland finds itself in the midst of a drought.Yes, the Emerald Isle is looking very distinctly brown.
Weeks of unbroken sunshine and virtually no rain, following a relatively dry spring, has led to widespread water restrictions.
It is already the hottest summer since 1976 and there is no end to the heatwave in sight.
These extreme weather events have tested the emergency services, government agencies and communities across the island, often working in dangerous situations to ensure the lights remained on, the elderly and vulnerable were safe, and animals were looked after.
I remember the volunteers in County Cork, who spent days clearing hundreds of roads of fallen trees, the good people of Straffan in County Kildare, who kept their guests fed and watered when we were virtually stranded by impassable, snow-covered roads, and the firemen now having to deal with gorse fires in the Wicklow mountains.
Weather reporting is also not easy for us - it disrupts technology, makes moving around treacherous, and simply being exposed to the elements for long periods is unbearable.
But it is a story people are interested in, a story which is the simplest form of news, because it matters to everyone around you.
So what is causing this epic year of weather?
Climate change, prompting more extreme events? Normal, if irregular meteorological patterns? Or simply a coincidence?
There is no conclusive answer, but - whatever the cause - 2017-18 will go down in the history books as a time when new records were set.
And there may be more to come.