Irish Times: Towards the end of the drought that struck the west for much of early spring, a university geography professor shared with me a photograph he had taken in Connemara. It showed a remarkable vista of bog and mountain dried and bleached to an eerie ash blond. On our side of the bay, too, even lowland tracts of moor grass offered this unreal platinum sheen.
All was caused by evapotranspiration, to use the professors term. With some 40 rainless days from mid February to mid April, the relentless and...