Gulf Stream brings gloom and grumbles

Donal Hickey looks at the reasons for our wet summer.

IRELAND might appear to be the wettest country in the world. Funny thing, however, it’s not. Dublin gets an average annual rainfall of 30 inches, but they get a lot more in parts of America — 60 inches in Miami, Florida, for example.

So, even allowing for the fact the west is much wetter than Dublin, is Ireland that rain-sodden after all? Well, the difference is that many other countries tend to get all their rain in one season — a good lash for a while and then weeks and months of sunshine.