Here’s today’s forecast from Met Eireann, the Republic’s weather service.
The symbol in the lower left corner is the typical weather for Dublin. On a good day, we get the sun-rain-LIGHT-clouds symbol (upper-left and upper-right symbols).
It seems a little surreal to combine every possibility into a single symbol, but it really is the most effective way to communicate a forecast. The forecast for the four regions in this clipping makes sense to me, and I’ve only been here a short while.
I did a fair amount of research over the 8 days of sun that ended today, and I came to a conclusion. When the sun is out in Dublin, it is at least as strong as the sun in Gurnee in mid-May. It is more than strong enough to bask in a sunny spot, even late in the day.
This was a subject of some speculation before I left the lower latitudes of Chicagoland (42° N), Pennsylvania (40° N), New Jersey and NYC (40° N). At that time, Anita was sending messages that vividly portrayed a dim sun that rarely penetrated thick clouds. To reassure myself, I thought, “Surely Dublin is no higher than the UP — and people sunbathe there, right?” Then I actually checked:
Is this one of the many things that cannot be conveyed by reading and research about a place? I couldn’t trust Irish sources, after all; “basking in the sun” might mean something very different to them.
Dublin has seen almost seven days of sun — real sun, with no clouds to speak of. It’s crazy! I feel like the city has welcomed me personally. Anita and I have been soaking it up — walking in it,
biking in it, and sitting in big public parks. It’s like a dream. It’s also helping me transition to life here.
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