Rain hail or shine weather is always a hot topic of conversation

Talking about the weather is something that will never go out of fashion. That’s why we’re so keen on the Midland Weather Channel on Facebook, run by 22-year-old Cathal Nolan from Rhode, who brings us daily updates on the weather across Westmeath, Offaly and Laois.

A student of climatology in NUI Maynooth, Cathal grew up in a household that always had an eye on the forecast and his father, a pilot with the Clonbullogue Parachute Club, has kept a weather diary since the 1990s.

With farmers in mind, Cathal started the weather page to lend a local understanding to the forecast. It was also borne out of something more serious: the tragic death of a young Mullingar women last year when a tree fell on her car during one of the worst storms of 2013 prompted Cathal to take action.

“That event had a big affect on me. The fact is, that particular storm system wasn’t well forecast,” says Cathal. “The wind speeds were far stronger than they expected. One of the reasons the page was set up then was out of the safety concerns for forecasts like that in the midlands. Generally, when people are talking about severe storms, they tend to overemphasise the south and west, but then there’s little detail as to what actually happens in the midlands.”

So how long does it take Cathal to forecast every day?

“To come up with a forecast it takes roughly 40 minutes looking at different models, variations and different sites and your own general observations and then compile it into the one piece.

“Weather can change so drastically within a couple of miles. Really the inspiration behind the page was to be able to give that local analysis on the weather for people across the midlands as opposed to the national view. The weather forecast given by Met Éireann is a national forecast and it doesn’t look into the specifics or small details of the midlands.

“It’s national and international weather you get a greater understanding of what causes the effects we see on a local basis. It’s taking the big picture and translating it into the small scale and day to day weather we see across the midlands.”

With the Midland Weather Channel up and running since last July, Cathal says people are responding well to the page.

“People seem to be availing of the service, particularly in the winter months. Getting into the long nights with frost and ice on the roads, people have the tendency to heed the warnings. It’s always great to have forecasts available for people to get a couple of days’ warning before the event happens, to give them that slight chance to prepare or change their plans.”

Prior to studying climatology, Cathal did an arts degree in UCD, in geography and history. While there he studied climatology as a module under Gerard Mills, one of the top climatology lecturers in the country.

“From studying under him and a lot of hours spent reading in the library, writing down my own notes and materials – that’s really how I built up to understanding of the weather models and how they work and vary. The models update themselves every six hours. Depending on the weather situation, the model that you get at six o’clock in the morning could be completely different to the model at 12 o’clock. It’s trying to understand why that has occurred and how it is likely to change in the next six hours.

“We always would be looking at the weather forecasts on the six o’clock news and nine o’clock news. From looking at that you pick it up over the years.”

So how does the weather differ in the midlands as opposed to the rest of the country?

“The wind in the midlands generally isn’t too severe, the highest gusts recorded in the midlands rarely reach above than 72mph. Whereas on a nationwide basis, wind speeds often in the west often exceed 110mph. So we’re lucky in the midlands because we’re sheltered.

“The negative of living in the midlands in winter is that we tend to see quite a bit more snow and frosty nights. We’re one of the coldest spots in Ireland. In the summer however, the centre of the country tends to heat up a lot more than the coast because you get coastal sea breezes. In the midlands it’s almost like an oven effect, the highest temperature ever recorded in the midlands occurred in Lough Boora, County Offaly, the highest temperature of the country in the last century, where it reached above 31 degrees Celsius.”

Being a climatologist means looking at the bigger picture of weather systems and how it affects the earth, so does that mean Cathal buys into the global warming effect?

Actually, no. Cathal classes himself as a sceptic when it comes to climate change and believes it is a more cyclical event.

“We only have knowledge on weather records for the past 150 to 200 years at most. The earth has been around for God knows how many billions of years. We can’t accurately judge on the climate for the last 200 years, we’re only looking at a very narrow window that we have records for. So to say that these ‘doomsday’ predictions that are bandied around, and that it all depends on how much slurry Tom spreads or how much you use your petrol car, it’s really only a theory at this stage. I would personally be sceptical on it.

“We’ve seen evidence before of trees that have been found in the extreme Arctic north, seas found in Antarctica, and this is evidence that at one stage there was plant life growing in that area. It seems to be a natural cycle, it really doesn’t seem to be anything that we’ve caused. It’s a little bit ludicrous to be honest.”

Is there any truth in the saying ‘red sky at night, shepherd’s delight, red sky in the morning, shepherd’s warning’ or other common phrases to predict the weather?

“As the sun rises in the east, if we have a weather system coming in from the west, which is where most of Ireland’s weather comes in from, you will actually see a red sky in the morning if the system is on the way in. There is an element of truth in it.”

Other things to watch out for is odd occurrences in nature.

“One example was during the storm last year on February 12. The night before it had been particularly calm, almost eerie how calm it had been,” he explains.

“Across from my house there’s a ring fort and in the field there’s a large number of sheep. We’ve been looking at them for years and there was never any bizarre behaviour. That particular night, however, the sheep had all gathered together in the centre of the ring fort, huddled down on their knees.

“And the next day, the day of the storm, which was the most powerful storm of last year, winds across the southwest reached 177mph off the Cork coast and the sheep stayed in the huddle until the storm was over.

"The second it was over they moved on and did their own thing. They seemed to sense that something big was on the way and they huddled together for shelter and warmth. A lot of people would deny it but I think a certain element of nature does know far more than we do.”