Turning up heat on weather guru Ring

In a letter to the Irish Examiner on Jul 13 last, I pointed out that weather guru Ken Ring’s forecasting for the early summer months of the year turned out to be erroneous in numerous respects.

Now Lynne Kelliher (Irish Examiner, Sept 16) provides another instalment of Ring’s prognostications for the forthcoming period. She refers to his “uncanny accuracy” in predicting the July heatwave.

In fact, Ring (as reported in the Irish Examiner on Mar 28), spoke about a heatwave lasting the first 10 days of July; “cloudy and scattered rain activity” from 12th of the month onwards and a drop in temperatures; “hot maximums” returning Jul 19, 25 and 28; and overall a July “slightly wetter than average”. August, he said, would see temperatures up to 30 Celsius during the periods 12th-20th and 24th -31st.

Most of this turned out to be spectacularly wide of the mark. The July heatwave lasted till the 21st and though the weather continued fine overall, there was no recurrence of “hot maximums” later in the month.

And, far from being “slightly wetter than average”, it turned out to be ” the driest July in years” (Irish Examiner, Jul 29). The predicted August heat wave never showed up.

Does anyone (apart from myself) keep tabs on how the actual weather turnout compares to Mr Ring’s prophecies?

John A Murphy

Douglas Road

Cork