The sunniest and wettest places in Ireland
Where the sun shines most, where the rain falls hardest, and the driest, warmest and windiest corners of the country.
Ireland's weather is not spread evenly. The south-east gets half as much rain again as a Kerry valley gets in a wet year, and a west Galway hillside collects four times what falls on Dublin Bay. Here is where the extremes are, with the long-term station figures Met Éireann publishes.
The sunniest places
The south-east coast is the sunniest part of the country. Rosslare in Wexford was the sunniest station in Ireland for decades, with about 1,600 hours of sunshine a year, roughly 4.4 hours a day, and since its station closed the title has passed along the coast to Arklow in Wicklow, with 1,612 hours a year in the 1981 to 2010 averages. Dublin manages about 1,450 hours, and the Cork coast around Roches Point is close behind. The reason is geography: fronts arriving from the Atlantic have crossed the whole country by the time they reach Wexford, and much of their cloud has thinned or rained out.
The dullest places are the midlands and the north-west. Birr in Offaly averages about 1,180 hours a year, and Claremorris in Mayo about 1,100 in the older averages, about 3 hours a day. The county sunshine tables show the month-by-month picture, with May and June the sunniest months everywhere.
The wettest places
The mountains of the west take the prize. Glanagimla near Leenane in Connemara records about 2,875 mm a year, the highest of any long-running station, and the high ground of the Macgillycuddy's Reeks in Kerry is estimated at close to 3,000 mm. At sea level the wettest places are the Atlantic coast of Kerry, Galway, Mayo and Donegal: Valentia Island averages about 1,430 mm, and Belmullet in Mayo has the most wet days of any station, 193 a year with 1 mm or more. Rain in the west is frequent rather than torrential, but the exceptions are memorable: the wettest day ever measured in Ireland was 243.5 mm at Cloone Lake in Kerry on 18 September 1993, more than Dublin gets in three months.
The driest places
Dublin Bay. Ringsend records about 683 mm a year, the lowest of any station, and Dublin Airport about 750 mm with just 128 wet days. The Dublin and Wicklow Mountains shelter the city from the south-westerlies, and the whole east coast from Louth to Wexford is dry by Irish standards, at 750 to 900 mm. Kildare and Meath are not far behind. The records page ranks all 32 counties from wettest to driest using the figures gathered for this site.
The warmest and coldest
Valentia Island is the warmest place over the year, at an annual average of about 10.9°C, kept mild by the ocean all winter; the Kerry and Cork coasts rarely see a hard frost. The coolest lowland station is Mullingar at about 9.3°C, because the midlands cool off at night and warm up by day without the sea to steady them. The warmest summer afternoons are inland and in the east, where 25°C comes most years, and the coldest winter nights are in the midlands and the north, where −10°C is possible in a cold spell. The record low of −19.1°C was set at Markree Castle in Sligo in 1881.
The windiest
Malin Head at the top of Donegal is the windiest station, with an average wind of about 30 km/h and 66 days a year of gales. The whole Atlantic seaboard is windy, and Mace Head in Connemara holds the Irish records for both the strongest gust, 184 km/h, and the strongest mean wind, 142 km/h, set during Storm Éowyn in January 2025. The calmest place is Kilkenny, with an average wind of about 12 km/h, which is part of why the south-east midlands feel so much warmer on a summer day than the figures suggest.
See it county by county
Every county has its own page with its wettest and driest months, its warmest and coldest, and how it compares with its neighbours: start with Kerry, Galway, Dublin and Wexford, or open the compare tool.