Accurate data which reveal the complex pattern of Irish rainfall are obtained from a network of nearly 600 people around the State who voluntarily take rainfall readings every morning. At 9 a.m. each day, these voluntary observers measure the amount of water collected by their rain gauges in the previous 24 hours, sending on their figures to Met Eireann in Glasnevin once a month. Continuity and reliability are paramount, and Mr John Joe Doyle of Tulla, Co Clare, excelled in both.
John Joe took his first rainfall measurement in 1943, and continued with this routine, day in day out, without a break, until he retired last year at the venerable age of 93. His 56-year unbroken stint recording rainfall is unlikely to be equalled in the future, and only one Irish weather observer that we know of has surpassed it.
Dr John Moore, physician and amateur meteorologist, was born in Dublin 155 years ago today, on October 23rd, 1845. He prospered in his chosen calling, becoming in due course president of the Royal College of Physicians in Ireland and one of the most distinguished practitioners of his generation, gaining a knighthood in the process. But his meteorological marathon had begun at the age of 20 when he was still a student. It was prompted, no doubt, by the fact that his father, Dr William Moore, was also interested in the weather and had kept his own daily records some years earlier.
It is likely that Moore jnr's near-obsession with the weather developed with the succession of lethal epidemics that spread through the insanitary and overcrowded city of Dublin in his youth. They were particularly prevalent in summer, and this led the young doctor to study the relationship between weather and public health, and the importance of climate in the treatment of disease. His textbook on the subject, Meteorology, Practical and Applied, was based largely on his own researches, and the section entitled "The Influence of Season and of Weather on Disease" became the accepted wisdom on the subject for a generation.
But to meteorologists, Sir John Moore is remembered primarily as a weather observer of quite remarkable tenacity. He kept a daily record of the weather at his house in Fitzwilliam Square in Dublin for more than 70 years, longer than any other Irish observer known to us. The manuscript registers he maintained meticulously until a few days before he died, aged 91, in 1937, are carefully preserved in the Meteorological Service Library in Dublin, a permanent reminder of the devotion of an amateur meteorologist in a bygone age.