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News Letter
  • 17/09/2024
The News Letter editor Ben Lowry at Stormont talks about the unusual autumnal summery spell on September 17 2024. It comes a week after the hottest temperature for the year in Northern Ireland, when the mercury reached 27 Celsius
Transcript
00:00I'm here in Stormont on one of the best days of the year, and it's not only is it September, it's late September.
00:08In fact, I'm going to go over to the shade to talk a little bit about how unusual this is.
00:12It was only 10 days ago that we had the hottest day of the year in Northern Ireland, 27 degrees Celsius.
00:19It was almost the hottest in the UK. That was Friday.
00:23Then the Saturday was 26, which was hotter than Barcelona on the Sunday, which is only 24, 25.
00:29And now we are in a spell of four days, non-stop sunshine, over 20 degrees every day.
00:37Yesterday, Monday, was 22. It was 0.1 degrees off the hottest temperature in the UK.
00:45And these are all, it's really all Ireland temperature. Ireland is bathed in sunshine these next few days.
00:53Some parts of Northern England, West Coast, Scotland, are also going to be stunning.
01:02But everywhere in Northern Ireland, Fermanagh, Londonderry, Coleraine is stunning this afternoon,
01:11set to be stunning the next few days.
01:13Even across the border in Mallinhead, which is the weather station in Ireland that has the highest cloud cover.
01:20Even Mallinhead is going to be non-stop sunshine.
01:26Our Stormont politicians are working up there.
01:30But what's so unusual about this is that September is cooler, for example, normally than June.
01:38And we've had yesterday, for example, more than 10 hours of sunshine.
01:41This is a time of the year when we really only have 12 hours of daylight.
01:46And yet this is so many days, it's going to be six in total, to probably impact on the overall averages for September.
01:52So, Northern Ireland's finally got its summer.
01:56And normally I would say, enjoy it while it lasts, because in Northern Ireland it never does.
02:00But it's actually going to last right the way through the rest of today, into this evening, tomorrow, Wednesday, Thursday.
02:06Not too bad thereafter either.
02:09And one of the things about Northern Ireland is that because we get so much rain,
02:14and it's miserable so much of the time, that it's really lush when the sun does come out.