""It's mainly down to how changeable it is, and also the fact that we can't plan anything or rely on it," he said. "People are obsessed because there's always something outdoors that they're thinking about doing, whether it be tomorrow, the weekend or a big event coming up. "I think the fact that it varies so much across the island as well. It's a very small island. What I post in Carlow, and it'll be blue skies and sunshine, and I get all these messages from the west of Ireland saying, 'It's not like that here'.""
""I've always been a techie growing up, and I've always had a fascination with snow," he said. "So, when I was growing up, I always wanted to know, 'Will it snow? Why didn't it snow? Why did it snow on Mount Leinster and not in my house in Tullow?' "I was always into technology. I was the first one in my school to have a mobile phone and a laptop back in the late 1990s. Then I got a weather station - kind of a cheap one - and I decided to register the domain carlowweather.com, set up a website and get the weather station to talk to the website.""
""They've got a much harder job than me. They have to do the whole country for three to five days in a very, very short period of time," he said. "You're never going to get it right for everybody, no matter how good you are. They have a thankless job.""
Alan O'Reilly from Tullow combined a lifelong interest in technology and a fascination with snow to build a local weather website. He installed a home weather station, registered the domain carlowweather.com and connected the station to the site as a tech project that grew. He attributes Irish preoccupation with weather to its changeability, inability to plan around it, and strong regional variation across the small island. He recognizes the difficulty of forecasting for an entire country and notes that national presenters face a thankless task trying to satisfy everyone.
Read at Irish Independent
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