Ben Lowry: Grey spell shows that Northern Ireland is not quite as cloudy as we might think

(Click here to read Ben Lowry’s main column about unionists and St Patrick’s Day)​

I was joking. The sunniest parts of Northern Ireland, such as parts of the Ards Peninsula, get about 1,400 hours of sunshine a year, which is roughly one third of total daylight. That means that for every day of sunshine you can expect two days without. It rarely works out as perfectly as that, because you might have a day that is largely cloudy but has an hour of sun, and vice versa.

But we really have just seen an unusually grey burst of weather. Dr Mark Bailey, retired Director of Armagh Observatory, points out that at Armagh there was a six-day sequence of sunless days from February 13 to 18 (Tuesday past) inclusive. Then, before that, the 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th recorded just 0.1, 0.2, 0.1, 0.0, and 0.1 hours respectively. Thus for the 11 days from Saturday February 8 there was only 0.5 hours of sun at Armagh.

The last time Armagh had a sequence of six sunless days in a row in February was almost 60 years ago, from February 7 to February 12, 1966. This year (2025) is one of only five since 1880, that have had six sunless days in a row, and there have only been two that had seven.

I would not have realised the six totally sunless days in NI was so rare. The sun is scarce here but not quite as scarce as we might think.

Ben Lowry (@Benlowry2) is News Letter editor