It is unlikely to be remembered for high temperatures, however, as more notable events included an unusually cool summer, a code red storm, a flash flood and even a mini-drought.
The top 10 placing, which Met Éireann expects to declare if there are no surprises before the end of the month, comes despite a summer dominated by Arctic air masses that pulled temperatures down.
“We’re in a period now when even when it seems cool, overall temperatures are above the long-term average,” Paul Moore, climatologist with Met Éireann, said.
7-Day Weather Forecast: 23rd December – 29th December 2024
His point is illustrated by the one month that will enter the record books – May, which was the country’s warmest May since recording began. Many would be surprised to hear that, because it was a cloudy and dull month with no real scorchers.
“It was warm because the night-time temperatures were very high,” Mr Moore said.
“We didn‘t have lots of warm, sunny days – it was warm, cloudy days and then warm nights, with the cloud acting as insulation.”
He said that sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic, which experienced an unprecedented extreme marine heatwave last year, were still well above average.
“So when we get the air masses coming from there, as we often do, we tend to get above-average temperatures,” he said.
The build-up of heat caused thunderstorms and intense bursts of rain in the second and third weeks of the month – one of several bouts of thunder that occurred during the year.
It was not warm air from the Atlantic that shaped the next few months, however, but cold air from the north.
While much of Europe had its warmest summer on record in a year that was the world’s hottest overall, this country was an outlier. The heat from mainland Europe didn’t reach Ireland, which was mostly stuck on the northerly side of the jet stream and was chilled by Arctic blasts. “High pressure tended to build to our west with low pressure over Scandinavia and that brought down cold air,” Mr Moore said.
“If high pressure was to the east then hot air might come up from the south, but we didn’t tap into any of those hot continental air masses during the summer.”
There were some notably warm days this year – particularly those that popped up during winter months.
Belmullet hit a balmy 15.4C on January 28 – the highest ever recorded for a January day in that location and a curveball in a month when temperatures were otherwise below average overall.
Moore Park in Cork recorded 14.7C in February and seven of Met Éireann’s 25 main weather stations had their warmest February on record. Five had their warmest in 25 years and nine had their highest-ever minimum night-time temperature, which never fell below –2.2C.
A narrower-than-normal gap between day and night temperatures was also a feature in March and April.
More recently, temperatures reached 19.1C in Athenry on October 16 and a remarkable 19.2C in Dublin’s Phoenix Park on November 6.
This year has also been notable for storms, beginning with Storm Isha, which struck on January 21 and was followed just three days later by Storm Jocelyn. Western and north-western counties were worst hit during this period and fallen power lines left tens of thousands without electricity, some for several days.
Storm Kathleen struck in early April and Lilian arrived in August followed by Ashley in October, Bert in November and the biggest of them all, Darragh.
Storm Darragh, which blasted through most of the country during the first week of this month had multiple counties under red wind warnings and deservedly so.
Many trees came down across the country and at one point almost 400,000 customers were without power.
Thousands still had no electricity days later and the impact on neighbouring Britain is continuing to be felt here in the disruption caused by damage to Holyhead port.
Two other storms, Henk in January and Conall in November, were also on Ireland’s radar, but they skirted around the country, causing little more than a stiff breeze.
Storm damage might have been worse only for the fact that in most cases the accompanying rain was less extreme than experienced in previous years. That wasn’t the case in Donegal, however, where heavy rain during Storm Bert caused flooding in several parts, most dramatically in Killybegs.
The River Feale rose so rapidly that it burst its banks and inundated homes and businesses before anyone had a chance to sound a warning or move to protect their property and belongings.
Yet even in Donegal, overall rainfall was below average, as it was in all but four of Met Éireann’s main stations over the year.
Valentia, Co Kerry; Roches Point, Co Cork; Cork Airport and Johnstown Castle in Co Wexford recorded rainfall slightly above average, but all others had just 70-80pc of their normal annual totals.
Many stations had official “dry spells”, which means 15 or more consecutive days with less than a millimetre of rain each.
One area, Moore Park in Co Cork, was officially declared to be in drought in January with 16 days when every day had no rain or less than 0.2mm of rain.
February, March and April were wetter than average and parts of Donegal and Wexford received almost twice their normal monthly rainfall.
June and July were cool and dry in most places, but August saw the country split, with the west and north getting a good deal of rain while the east and south received little.
The pattern flipped in September with the north and west the driest, and the south and east wettest.
It was mostly cool all over and there was an usually early autumn frost, but since then, temperatures have been mainly mild.
Last year was Ireland’s hottest and wettest on record, with a mean temperature of 11.2C. Mr Moore said that would not be repeated this year, but he said temperatures were still generally moving in the same direction – upwards – as the evidence of climate change becomes ever more pronounced.
The outlook for 2025 is uncertain, although it is expected that overall global temperatures may be marginally lower than this year, which was under the influence of El Niño for the first half.
El Niño is a natural climatic variation caused by the movement of warm air from the Pacific and it helped supercharge the already climbing temperatures of the last two years.
Its opposite, La Niña, generally has a cooling effect, but scientists have said that if a La Niña develops in 2025, they are not confident it will substantially counteract the human-caused warming of the world.
“Even if a La Niña event does emerge, its short-term cooling impact will be insufficient to counterbalance the warming effect of record heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere,” Celeste Saulo, of the World Meteorological Organisation, said. “Even in the absence of El Niño or La Niña, conditions since May, we have witnessed an extraordinary series of extreme weather events which have unfortunately become the new norm in our changing climate.”