Country Living with Francis Farragher

My attendance record at lectures back in the then UCG (University College Galway) of the late 1970s wasn’t exactly an exemplary one. In the quest for a BA back then, there really wasn’t that much notice taken of whether you bothered to turn up or not at the lecture hall – it was all down to that one exam around the end of May which meant a frantic period of ‘cramming’ just as the long sunnier days arrived.

There was though one module in geography during the degree year that focused on weather and it aroused a certain curiosity that tended to pull me away from the snooker table and that fruitless for a 50 break. Here and there, our lecturer would mention a weather phenomenon called El Nino, which from my limited Leaving Cert Spanish vocabulary, I knew translated into ‘The Boy’.

Our lecturer would often mention how El Nino or La Nina (‘The Girl’) could impact on our weather patterns but I have to admit that I could never really get my head around the whole concept, and to be truthful, I still struggle a bit to figure it out.

El Nino is now back in the news again as according to scientists this major player in our world weather patterns has officially started again and unfortunately it seems that it won’t be good news for us, and especially so in the context of global warming.

There is nothing new about El Nino which first came to notice around the 16th century when fishermen off the coast of Peru noticed that the waters of the eastern Pacific would warm up and prevent the cooler and nutrient-rich waters from the deep rising to the surface. Without this food, the fish would either die or move away, leaving the Peruvian fishermen with empty nets and empty tables.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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