May/June 2023 – an underrated period of fine weather
As many of you know, I reminisce heavily and consistently about particular periods of weather because one I’m a massive weather nerd with a photographic memory of past events and two these periods are often when my mental health peaks with a big boost from favourable weather occurring getting out to enjoy it. Okay it sounds rather silly that I let weather dictate my mood like that but it happens and my favourite weather is a fine sunny or snowy day. These two weathers are what make me get out of the bed and enjoying the outdoors more than anything else could. It should be no surprise then that I always talk about how epic summer 2018 was or more recently spells like July 2021, August 2022 and September 2023 heatwaves. However, there’s a bit of a curve ball here and that is I often leave out one fine period of weather which was as noteworthy as the other spells named and that is May into June 2023. In this blog post, I am going to be discussing why I do not think of this as highly as some other periods but also reminisce on what it did provide that I am grateful for and look back on fondly.
It was a relatively poor spring weather wise in 2023 with the wettest March since 1947 and a rather disappointing April. January and February had also been very benign. The weather wasn’t really up to much excitement in the first quarter of 2023 then May came around.
The first few days of May continued a rather benign theme but the 8th May 2023 brought the most intense thunderstorm in my lifetime to date. There was a solid two hours of rumbles, rolling thunder on numerous occasions – something I hadn’t heard before living here in Dublin. Normally our lightning strikes are blink and miss, one off every now and then. 8th May was different. Rather stupidly, I went to Howth Summit to capture the storm as this had been my go-to spot for previous thunderstorms because previous storms had been to my southeast with the Wicklow Mountains nearly always killing the energy in the storms so it was relatively safe to go to the Howth cliffs with a decent view for a photo composition too – this was not the case in May 2023. The storm was overhead, very loud rumbles like a bomb going off with lightning strikes too close for comfort but as stupid as it was risking my own life (don’t try this at home!), I was enjoying every moment of it. I consider thunderstorms overrated as I personally don’t see the hype surrounding them living here in a place that is very rare to see anything more than a few rumbles if even every year. Maybe my view is glass half full and I needed to see a proper storm to understand – May 2023 brought the closest I’ve seen to one although 19th October 2022 had also been pretty decent by Dublin standards. My poor Nikon D5300 got absolutely drenched recording video trying to capture lightning strikes but it got recovered thanks to rice removing the moisture after. I flew my DJI Mini 3 Pro towards the Baily Lighthouse before the storm approached and the sky was menacing. As it started to rain, I brought the drone back immediately because flying your drone in the rain is a death sentence. On its return to home track, I managed to get a cloud to ground lightning strike on video which I have shared below along with numerous other lightning strikes I got on my camera including a selfie with one. As mentioned, don’t try any of this at home. Don’t use it as inspiration. Consider it more that I was super lucky because it could have been so much worse for me. Did I mention there was also great light and a rainbow after. If you get a clearance, sunsets after a thunderstorm can be epic.
Once the storm had passed, much of May was back into the benign theme. On the 22nd, I had gone on a family holiday to Disneyland Paris where the weather was very fine most of the time though was cloudy at first. On the 25th, I visited the city centre of Paris itself. It was the best weather day of the period with clear blue skies all day long and concluded it with a sunset from Montparnasse Tower looking towards the Eiffel Tower. It was perfect. I returned to Dublin late on the 26th when a fine period of weather had really taken off.
Starting on the 28th May, I went out for every sunset for 10 days in a row with a different location each time for a different composition or purpose. I put out a poll on my Twitter (don’t give me any of that X nonsense) about four different possible compositions I could do – these being the Aviva Stadium, Howth Lighthouse, Dún Laoghaire Lighthouse and Skerries Harbour. Howth won the poll but I planned to do all of them and thanks to the weather being consistently good, I was able to do so.
So taking it day by day… I started off with Howth for sunset on 28th May. It was rather chilly to say the least with a brisk northeasterly breeze. The sky was fair with a decent amount of cloud and there was some high cloud on the horizon. I wasn’t too optimistic. I’ve seen too many of these sunsets fail but fortunately, the cloud was just about light enough for the sun to show by the lighthouse on the horizon. Sunset one was a success.
Next day the 29th May, I headed to Skerries for sunset. Thankfully the wind was much lighter this time and there wasn’t nearly as much of a chill to the air making the experience more enjoyable. It was a fantastic evening – one of the best sunsets of 2023 with good colour, calm enough for reflections and tide was high too. Successfully got the sunset over the pier and a bright sun pillar had showed too which glowed red after – I had never seen a sun pillar glow as bright red as this before.
The 30th May was the best of the 10 days. I didn’t just do the sunset this day. I also did the sunrise. I got up at half 3 stupid o’clock and got a taxi to Portmarnock. I arrived and there was already a wonderful glow with a relatively hazy horizon but very clear otherwise with a bright sun pillar appearing again as if it never disappeared from the prior evening. Did a long walk up and down the Velvet Strand. Was absolutely knackered with little sleep and had a Sports Day to capture for a school as well that same day so I couldn’t give up. I was glad to be out though because that sun pillar was fantastic and the sunrise itself was great with good light on the strand. Very few people out.
For sunset on the 30th May, I head out to Dún Laoghaire after getting some much needed sleep. Took the DART to Salthill & Monkstown station and attempted to line up the sunset with the Aviva Stadium from the back of Dún Laoghaire West Pier. I managed to bump into Fred (@rawdublin) there to capture the same thing. We both got it successfully. Sun was a bit bright rather than hazy but it lined up just fine.
The next few days afterwards (31st May-2nd June) were very similar to each other in they had a sunny and cool early morning followed by a period of low cloud from the late morning to the late afternoon hours then clearing up during the early evening with bright clear blue skies. The low cloud didn’t bother me as it clearing up for sunset was all I cared for and I got out for each of them. For the 31st May, I returned to Dún Laoghaire but this time at the East Pier to line up the sunset with the West Pier Lighthouse. It was a success albeit this composition is nearly always a pain in the ass because of the stationary boats getting in the way. I managed to get a decent shot after cropping to remove the boat poles. I got all the Twitter poll photo compositions successfully and it was only day 4 of the period – not often you can say that with Ireland’s cloudy climate. I stuck around to see what the afterglow would be like and I was not disappointed. It glowed purple with faint crepuscular rays. Skies like this in photos look photoshopped but they very much exist and you need to be lucky to catch one – though if you get a clear sky during a period of high volcanic emissions like 2009 and 2019, you are highly likely to get one.
The 1st June I decided to do the Howth sunset cruise because of all the times I’ve been to and captured Howth, I hadn’t done the sunset cruise yet. It was rather scary at times of the boat wobbling about a lot because of the high tide and easterly winds. It wasn’t particularly strong winds but the onshore factor made it feel sketchy at times. I can’t imagine going on a boat off the west coast where it’s onshore winds most of the time and much worse wind strength. It was enjoyable otherwise with a lovely moon rising over Ireland’s Eye too. Just a lovely sunset all round rather than anything outstanding. When we got back and the sun had set, the sky started to glow purple yet again. It made me start to think if the atmosphere is full of dust and volcanic emissions and primed for some epic sunset skies again in future – alas not but it was nice to see as a call back to the 2019-20 days when these skies were common due to a Russian volcano eruption in June 2019. If you haven’t gone on the Howth sunset cruise yet, I’d very much recommend it.
On the 2nd June, I went to Sandycove as I hadn’t been there in a year and it’s one of my favourite places to go for capturing on the Dublin coast. Got some lovely silhouettes of children playing on their paddleboards against the sunset at first which their parents kindly allowed me to share followed by some drone shots of Scotman’s Bay and the Forty Foot and then long exposure of the sky turning purple yet again for the third day on the dot after the sun had set. This sunset felt distinctly chilly but not because of wind which was calm. Feeling that on an early June day with clear skies was rather strange to be honest.
The next 3 days, 3rd-5th June, were all fantastic featuring long periods of unbroken sunshine without any interruption from low cloud throughout and much warmer. I’m not a huge advocate of high temperatures but the 31st May-2nd June had felt a bit too chilly not going to lie with you. This great period of weather also coincided with the full moon phase with perfect conditions for it. To start off, I captured the sunset at Balbriggan which was great but I was there for the moonrise to line it up with Balbriggan Lighthouse, a composition I hadn’t done yet. The moon was going to rise behind the hills so had to be extra careful with my lining up though had the drone up in the air to give me a viewpoint of the moon as it was rising behind the hill that I could not see from the ground and this added a lot to helping me line it up that I wouldn’t otherwise be able to do perfectly. I had already done a blog post on this moonrise which you can find on my site with more images.
The 4th was a last minute decision and I took the DART to Clontarf rushing as fast as I could with only 50 minutes before sunset. The DART arrived and I got off at Clontarf Road Station. It was not pleasant, I could barely fit in the carriages. Great to see so many people out enjoying the cracking weather but the smell of sweat and all other odours right next to you with little breathing space… no thanks, I will hard pass. Give me my own private car any day over enduring this and the waiting times rather than getting up and go not missing a moment that could be worth capturing. I had to then get the bus to the Wooden Bridge. It was a Sunday so I had some time to wait until the next one would arrive. I took out the drone to capture Bram Stoker Park during golden hour and Clontarf Road in general trying to get creative. It was a nice sunset but very same-y with a lot of the skies in the past week then and if you’re not going to do PhotoPills type shots, these sunsets are quite boring really for landscapes with little to no cloud. There was 5 minutes left of sunset and there was no shot of me walking up the North Bull Wall in time before it sets so just sent the drone up to capture the last bit of light. The bright sun and high contrast in the sky and foreground was difficult to photograph. As the sunset passed, the next plan was then on and that was to capture another great moonrise, this time lined up with Poolbeg Lighthouse – a composition everybody and their mother tries to get in summertime from Clontarf Seafront. It was going to be much darker than the previous day’s moonrise so was going to be a challenge for my entry level Nikon D3500 (my D5300 which its SD card slot had stopped working would have yielded similar results) to get a clean, sharp shot and you can tell in the final images. It struggled with a very soft moon due to a slow shutter speed and denoising all the grain. Still it’s better than nothing.
The final day of the Bank Holiday weekend, Bank Holiday Monday itself the 5th, I went to Malahide Estuary as I seen Adventure Marina had a SUP session on there which I took advantage of. I had no other plans anyway. There was a bit of cloud on the horizon and it was hazier than recent sunsets but still more than good enough ending the best June Bank Holiday weekend weather wise since lockdown.
The 6th was back to the theme of low cloud middle third and clear skies/sunny first and last third. The low cloud lasted for longer on this day and it felt the most chilly out of all the days during this fine period. I head to Sutton for sunset to get the sun lined up with a particular grouping of trees over Portmarnock from Burrow Beach. I did this composition before in June 2021 but I wanted to improve on it. I have provided the image from then for reference (the first one below) in comparison to the 6th June 2023 (the second image). Let me know what you think on which is best. The 2021 one is probably best as the haze and slight cloud added to the picture rather than the most clear and slightly hazy 2023 image. This was the final sunset I had gone out for on consecutive days during the fine period.
I passed on going out for the 7th and 8th sunsets which were rather meh with fair amounts of clouds.
I went back out on the 9th to Howth for sunset but there was a large wall of cloud that blocked it. It was still a lovely warm evening to be out and about.
The first rain fell in nearly 3 weeks on the 10th but the sun came back on the 11th with a lovely sunset that I went to Claremont Beach in Howth to capture. Rather coincidentally, I captured herons with a very similar sunset to a sunset I captured from this same spot on 6th June 2022 with so many herons that I dubbed the attack of the herons. Nearly an identical time of year too, just 5 days apart.
The sunset on the 12th was cloudy but had some nice afterglow colour that I captured on the drone from home.
The 13th was a very warm day. Felt oppressive almost and it’s not often I can say that. At first it started off cloudy with some rain so sunrise was a no-go. The cloud broke up to hazy sunshine which I went to Skerries to take advantage of. It was lovely to get out and enjoy it. I later decided to go into Dublin City for sunset which was very calm but a wall of cloud blocked the sunset. There was still lovely golden light and colours beforehand and managed to capture swans in the Liffey along with great reflections.
On the 14th, I received my car. My granddad had very kindly bought this for me and was probably the best gift I have ever received as it has shaken up my photography a ton. Lots of the content I have captured in the past year since will have not happened had I not been gifted this car. To celebrate, I went to Balcarrick Beach in Donabate for my first drive in the new car. This is a spot that I have not done before for capturing. It is possible to get public transport here but is a fair walk down so I had never bothered. It was a cracking evening – one of my favourites of 2023 and one of my favourite days too with clear blue skies nearly all day and pleasantly warm. The sunset was stunning with one of the best sundogs I have ever seen, it was very bright. The afterglow sky was very colourful which I was not able to stay out for but I couldn’t complain with what I got on the drone. What a first sunset for the car.
The 15th was one final day of fantastic weather for the consistently fine period of weather. I decided to attempt to line up the sunset with Dublin Airport air traffic control tower. I should have known better though that it would have been poor as a change in the weather was on the way with cloud out west which would block the sunset. Still I pushed through and hoped for something. This was the best I managed. Live to try again another day, maybe sometime soon.
After the 15th, the weather was still largely fair and warm but much more variable and few standouts though some great thunderstorms on the 25th here and a big funnel cloud over Dublin Airport on the 20th that I missed by being asleep for 20 minutes. This blog post is long enough already and I don’t want to bore you much longer with my waffle of my memories. So a lot of this sounds great, don’t it? Lots of sunsets, lots of photos captured. What’s not to love. Indeed, I agree it was a great period to be alive and outdoors but it was a bit too chilly at times early on through late May and early June that brings it down a few points from some of the other epic spells I’ve seen. Nonetheless, it’s a period I look back on fondly with many positive memories made that I would kill to live through again especially after the very poor first half of 2024 weather wise.
Thank you very much for reading and enjoy the rest of your day.
