WE’VE enjoyed one of our most benign spring periods for decades with parts of the West having their driest March on record while a spurt of April growth has now complemented the excellent ground conditions.

The Mace Head Met Éireann weather station in south-west Conamara had its lowest ever rainfall total for the month of March, with just over one inch [26.4mms] recorded.

Following the highly-destructive Storm Eowyn, which hit the West of Ireland most severely on January 23/24 last, it has been a pretty much blemish-free spring period as regards ground conditions with tillage farmers now having all of their crops sown.

Abbeyknockmoy weather recorder, Brendan Geraghty, said that he had just 1.27 inches [32mms] of rainfall during the 31 days of our third month, one of the driest he had ever come across.

However, he pointed out that many parts of the county had seen a lull in growth in the aftermath of Storm Éowyn due to the ‘burning impact’ of the salt laden storm winds.

“One of the most noticeable features in the aftermath of the storm was a slowdown in growth due to the impact of the storm with a brown tinge to many of the fields.

“We didn’t really have any severe frosts but yet it’s only in the past week or so that you could notice the grass beginning to come on and the fields greening that bit more.

“But overall, it has been a wonderful Spring with cattle let out to grass not leaving a mark on the ground while for tillage farmers, conditions were perfect. Weatherwise, it has been a great start to the year,” said Brendan Geraghty.

He also said it was worth nothing that his rainfall total of just under 7.4 inches for the first three months of 2025 was roughly half of the total for the same period last year when we had a very wet spring period.

In their monthly report, Met Éireann described March as ‘mild, dry, sunny and relatively calm’  with average temperatures 1.1° to 1.8°C above the average for the month. Over the past week, soil temperatures in most parts are now well into double figures which will also give a growth flourish.

Sunshine totals for March were above the long term average at all of the Met Éireann stations across the country, with Belmullet on the north-western tip of Mayo, having the sunniest day of the month – 11.3 hours on Wednesday, March 19.

All but one of the weather stations across the country had no gales during March – the exception being Mace Head which had the month’s highest 10-minute mean wind speed period on Friday, March 28 of 63km/h.

Out settled spell is likely to come to an end around Sunday/Monday when a low-pressure system looks set to move in from the Atlantic heralding the start of a more changeable week.

However, the Met Éireann long-term forecast for the second half of April is giving a reasonable chance of high-pressure once again regaining control of our weather, bringing generally drier conditions with average temperatures.

Pictured:  Brendan Geraghty: A very dry March and a great Spring.