FLYING ACROSS IRELAND on an overnight flight from New York to Dublin almost exactly eight years ago in early July 2018, my face was pressed against the window looking at the countryside below. I’d never before seen the likes of it.

From west to east, the usual verdant patchwork quilt of greens was entirely gone, replaced by a uniform blanket of dusty browns and faded yellows – fields, meadows, forests and vegetation were parched and shrivelled, undernourished by shrunken waterways and a serious dearth of rainfall.

It was a bit discombobulating to witness from aboveground, almost as if the plane’s pilot had nodded off at the wheel, and we had strayed over central Spain.

2018 was a scorcher and was duly marked down as one of the warmest and driest summers on record for Ireland and most of Northwestern Europe. Sure, there were drought conditions and hair-raising wildfires and all that – but it was mighty, and all-too-rare, matched only by the heat of the fabled summer of 1976.

It was a proper Continental summer, as opposed to our usual mixed meteorological bag which ensures that making al fresco plans is a mug’s game. And so we made the most of it. God knows when the likes of such weather would come our way again.

And yet here we are in Ireland a mere eight years later, facing into our second heatwave in quick succession. Last month we learned what an Omega heat dome is (not good), and this week a prolonged spell of high temperatures has landed, along with heat advisories and sticky nights.

These days the weather is rarely out of the headlines. And it’s usually bad news,........

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