Episode 13 Weather Watchers with Barra Best

"Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it."

A witticism attributed to writer Mark Twain...

and we DO talk about the weather a lot.

But there's a good reason.

The weather affects our lives every day,

from the clothes we wear to the games we play.

And while we can't do anything about the weather,

we can certainly do things with it.

Strangford Lough in County Down.

It's beautiful in all seasons.

Especially in autumn,

when tens of thousands of Brent geese take advantage of tailwinds

to carry them from their summer breeding grounds in Canada

to their winter retreat in Ireland.

I've come to Castle Espie to meet up with John McCullough,

and to see these remarkable birds for myself.

You have a lot of birds here, but I suppose the big attraction

this time of year is the Brent geese?

Very, very much so.

I mean, these birds here that we see,

they're on the zoo side of things at Castle Espie.

But when you step beyond the gate here, you're looking at the wilds.

You're right out there, there's thousands and thousands

of birds that have migrated a long journey to be here.

So that's really what draws the crowds at this time of the year.

And they've flown quite a distance from the Canadian Arctic,

all the way here?

Yeah, they've flown right the way down

over the southern tip of Greenland,

they stop off in Iceland, because it's a staging ground,

they need to feed up there.

And then they make their way down to Strangford Lough.

And I suppose they're literally coming here

-for a vacation away from the cold?

-Of course they are.

-This is their Caribbean.

-It is.

Because, you imagine - or a you'll know -

that it's getting dark up there, it's getting cold up there.

They're getting hungry up there,

so the first thing they want to do is get here,

-relax and fill their stomachs.

-That's it.

-Fair play to them.

-It's all they do.

This is a lovely little sheltered bay here.

It's got plenty of eelgrass in it.

This green stuff that you can see, Barra -

this is what they're here to eat.

So this bay holds quite a few Brent geese.

When the tide's coming in,

you'll get them flying over this pier here, and they'll drop in here.

It's a massive number of the birds that come here.

Yeah, completely significant.

I mean, Brent geese put Strangford Lough on the map.

This is why this area is so protected,

because you're really talking about

nearly the entire world's population of this bird

that comes here. It's extremely significant.

How long will they stay here once they arrive?

They arrive in the autumn and they'll stay through the winter.

And then when we start hitting around about April, May -

what we would consider hopefully to be springtime here -

they're going to be turning round

and heading back up towards the Arctic.

There's plenty of truth in the saying

that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,

and I'm going to attempt to get up close, nose to beak,

with the resident geese.

I think I've got somebody a little bit hungry.

An absolutely magnificent bird.

No? No more? All done?

As evening falls over Strangford Lough,

the Brent geese feed and settle down for the night in their winter home.

I'm staying in this rich and fertile land.

County Down has its own fields of gold.

I'll never underestimate the importance

of why people get in touch

to find out what our weather's going to do.

Should they be trying to organise a barbecue or paint the garden fence?

But for some, their livelihoods depend on it.

So I've come here to find out how important an accurate forecast is.

This is Allan Chambers, and his farm is on the Lecale Peninsula.

We're surrounded on three sides by water, so we're quite mild.

We don't get heavy frost.

But probably the most important thing

is that we have probably the lowest annual rainfall in Northern Ireland.

And that's between 28-30 inches.

Why is that?

Well, we're on the sheltered side of the Mourne Mountains,

so the Atlantic fronts that bring the weather,

the showers and the rain in, tend to deposit most of the rain

on the far side of the mountains from here.

Today, we're harvesting wheat.

We've been watching the weather carefully,

because we want to get the machines in when the grain is at its driest.

I've been an arable farmer now for 50 years.

Basically, my life has been ruled by the weather.

I need to plan ahead.

I need to know when I'm going to get these windows that will open for me

to get big machines into the field,

or get my crops sprayed or get my fertiliser on.

So I watch the weather forecast every day, sometimes four,

five times a day.

Not only to see what it's going to do the next day,

but say in four or five days' time.

Allan's going to be under a bit of pressure

to get the harvest in before the weather breaks.

Two days ago, it looked like we were going to get four dry days.

Yesterday, there seemed to be a change coming about,

and this morning we're told they could be very heavy rain

by Friday afternoon.

We'll try and get this grain harvested and the straw baled up

and looked after before the weather breaks.

That might mean working until 11, 12 tonight, 1am.

If the breeze keeps up, there's no dew, we can work away.

So, everything going well, couple of days, three days,

we will have the grain safely in store,

and my year's work will have reached fulfilment.

I'm glad the weather was kind to Allan, and all farmers.

Another worry over for another year.

I like my weather like I like my tea -

not too hot and not too cold -

and the Gulf Stream does that for me, it regulates the temperature.

How does it do it?

Well, there's a strong, swift, warm Atlantic current

that goes along the east coast of the United States

and makes Ireland warmer than it would be otherwise.

A small tendril of the Gulf Stream called the North Atlantic Drift

comes towards Ireland, and this warms the surrounding waters.

Think of it like our own hot water bottle.

Also, thanks to the Gulf Stream, the north coast of Ireland

picks up consistent amounts of Atlantic swell.

People say to me, "Barra, I remember summer last year.

"It was on a Tuesday."

We have some of the best beaches in Europe,

but it's very rare that someone feels brave or optimistic enough

to go into the sea.

But one man who's not afraid to look into the eye of a storm

is big wave surfer Al Mennie.

Al has surfed all over the world in search of that perfect wave.

HE LAUGHS

And weather is the hinge on which surfing depends.

A surfing globetrotter Al may be,

but he caught his first wave closer to home.

I got into surfing through being on the beach at Castlerock

at the age of nine. My brother and I surfed.

My mum and dad, we've always had boats around the family,

that sort of thing. So it seemed to be normal to be in the sea.

And when lots of people think of surfing,

they picture Australia, they picture California -

but we have people coming from all around the world

to surf here on the north coast and along the west coast?

Yeah, we have excellent waves here. It's just colder here, obviously.

And it's wild in the winter, but we do have very good waves.

Especially the north coast, we have a prevailing wind direction

of southwest, so that's the best wind for us to have,

because it blows offshore and cleans up the surface of the waves.

And when I'm thinking about the weather,

I'm thinking about where the next batch of rain

is going to come in from the Atlantic.

But when you're thinking about surfing,

you're looking at systems around the globe, almost?

Well, in order for us to get surf here on the north coast,

we need weather to happen in other parts of the world

to send those waves to us. There's a misconception

where people think, "It's really windy by the sea today,

"there'll be good waves for surfing.

That's not how it is, that's not the kind of waves we look for.

In particular, I look for these storms,

these deep depressions starting to form down in the Atlantic,

over towards the Caribbean.

Believe it or not, if we see hurricanes down there,

we're sitting here going, "There's going to be waves in 7-10 days."

Al's taking me around the coast now

to check out a few of his favourite surfing spots.

What's the highest wave you've surfed off the coast of Ireland?

Probably over 60 feet.

Impressive. Was that during a storm of some sort?

Yeah, that was actually back in 2008.

At the time, it was the biggest recorded swell in the Atlantic.

All this technology, we can see the different swells

and the wind forecast and everything coming together.

It can predict where the waves are coming to,

and then, whenever they come to the coast,

we've got wave buoys in locations.

A wave buoy is essentially a measuring device on the ocean

that's moving with the swell and the wind,

and it's recording all this data.

So when I log in to the internet and I see these wave buoys,

it's telling me it's 25-foot swell,

and there's a wave period of 15 seconds, I know what's coming.

So that's very, very valuable information.

And sometimes, Al finds big waves in unexpected locations.

# Baby

# Running down to the riptide

# Take you away to the dark side

# I want to be your left-hand man... #

And sometimes it's Al who provides the photo opportunity.

We're at the Giant's Causeway,

one of our most popular tourist destinations, to see all the rocks.

But you like to come here to surf. How dangerous is it?

This is one of the most dangerous places you can go surfing.

I would not advise it to anybody, it is dangerous here.

It's because of all the rocks, in particular.

And it just gets battered here,

it's an extremely rough, wild part of the coast.

And these are the charts that you use to figure out where to go?

This is an Admiralty chart, which shows the depths of the ocean

and various currents and various things on it.

-If you look on here, this is where we are, just here.

-Uh-huh.

I look at the depth of the sea and then I look at what direction

it's going to swell and things like that.

So if you imagine, I'm sitting out here normally, on a big day,

I'd be sitting in around here, just where we are,

I'm looking for a big storm way up in the North Atlantic.

Way, way up there, so the winds are kept away from us.

It's all crazy chaos out there.

It pushes these swells in towards the coast, like that.

And locally, here, we've got local weather systems

which is giving us light offshore winds.

That's ideal to push off against the swell,

-to clean it all up and groom it all up.

-Smoothing out the waves.

And if you look as well here, we've got these massive, big cliffs.

They kill the wind, so if it's a really windy day,

for example, say it's 25mph winds,

that big cliff will knock that wind out of it,

so it could be down to ten.

So in here, it could be nice and smooth and clean,

despite out here being very rough.

Al's enthusiasm is infectious,

and I certainly wasn't going to let one of the best surfers in the world

go without a lesson.

# I've got nothing

# But I feel good

# I've got nothing

# But I feel good

# I've got nothing... #

OK, it isn't the 60-foot wave,

but it's still a huge achievement for me.

# I've got, got nothing

# But I feel good. #

Anywhere in our part of the world can make your senses dance or sing

if the weather's right.

Take a walk in the hazy sunshine, but enjoy it,

because the clouds floating above might not have a silver lining.

Till next time, bye-bye.