Northern Ireland this weekend basked in weather hot even by Mediterranean standards but is now back to autumn coolness

Summer in Northern Ireland, if it arrived at all, seemed to end in the middle of August.

That was the point at which the province not only got plenty of the rain that has been around all summer, but when temperatures got noticeably cooler. The south of England, meanwhile, continued to enjoy some very hot weather.

placeholder image — The Francis family. From left Hannah, Charlie, Annie, Amy and Warren, with their dog Blossom, in the Stormont estate on the evening of Sunday September 8 2024, as a hot summery spell of weather at the start of the weekend turned back to a more normal autumn. Pic by Ben Lowry

And the first day of autumn, September 1, seemed to confirm that trend when England’s hottest place was West Sussex, at a sweltering 30 Celsius, while the hottest place in NI was Castlereagh, at an almost cool 17.6C.

That all changed this weekend, when Northern Ireland enjoyed two days of stunning weather, on both Friday – when we had NI’s hottest day of the year – 27.2C in Killowen in Co Down – and on Saturday it was still sizzling, reaching 25.9C in Castlederg.

The good weather was seen across Northern Ireland. On Friday Thomastown, Co Fermanagh rose to 25.7C, with Portglenone in third at 25.1C.

These were among the hottest temperatures in the whole UK, with England on slightly hotter on Friday at 28C and Scotland edging us out for top spot on Saturday, with a temperature of 26.2C. In fact, much of England was wet on Saturday and yesterday, reversing the seasonal norm in which the southern UK is far hotter than NI.

Our hottest temperatures over the weekend were hotter than it was yesterday in Barcelona and roughly as hot as it was in the reliably hot and sunny Palo Alto in California.

The sudden return to hot sunny weather in Northern Ireland on Friday and Sunday was followed by a return to autumn yesterday, which temperatures that were much more in keeping with the average daily maximum for September days here of 17C.

On what was a partly sunny, partly cloudy day, Helen’s Bay in Co Down was NI’s hottest place at 18.6C.

As the picture above shows of the Francis family enjoying a walk in the grounds of the Stormont estate in east Belfast in fading sunshine, a lot of the atmosphere of autumn is now here, with leaves beginning to shed across the province.

It has been another changeable summer in NI, with plenty of wet weather in both July and August. July in fact had below average rainfall, and notably less than July 2023 which was the wettest on record, while this August was more damp than average.