An Scairbhín

Also known as 'the rough month of the cuckoo'

You’ve heard of El Nino, the Gulf Stream, and the North Atlantic Drift, well-known ocean currents that bring with them particular weather characteristics. You may also have heard of the Diablo, the Mistral, and the Sirocco, winds famed for blowing across California, and the Mediterranean. We’re all very aware of the naming system given to storms by today’s meterologists. But have you ever heard of the Scairbhín?

Pronounced ska-ra-veen, this is the name given to a unique Irish weather phenomenon that takes place during the last fortnight of April and the first fortnight of May. It is thought to derive from the Irish phrase, garbh mi na gcuach, and means something like ‘the rough month of the cuckoo’.

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I didn’t have a photo of a cuckoo, so just for fun I used Substack’s AI generation to produce one; it looks fairly accurate. This is the first time I have used AI generation; I wanted to see what it is like. I am not against it in principle, but against what humans use it for, ie pornography, war, deception, the theft of creatives’ work and the disregard for creative license.

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This four week period of Ireland’s natural calender is often characterised by extreme and seemingly illogical fluctuations of weather. It is not unknown to have mild sunny days followed by storms and flooding, hailstones, or even snow. This is no exaggeration: I have experienced it many times myself. Snow in May? Not unheard of. In Ireland, we say you can expect to experience all four seasons in one day, and this is certainly true of the Scarbhín.

Our ancient ancestors who worked the land and were much closer to the seasons knew this as ‘the hungry time’ of the year. This is because in the spring, they were busy planting their crops; in May and June, as their stockpile of food from the previous year’s harvest was running low, they would see the results of their labour in the growth of new crops that were as yet too young and immature to produce food.

The Scairbhín sounds incredibly destructive, and sometimes, it can be. Last year, the early budding of flowers on my apple trees were destroyed by strong winds, and we had very few apples that year. I left what there was on the trees for the birds and the wasps. Another year saw a cold snap kill off all the midges; you’d think that was a good thing, but I learned that year that midges are a food source for wasps. As a result, we had very few wasps. You might think that’s another good thing, but wasps are incredibly important to the ecosystem. Although the adults only eat sugars, they kill a lot of spiders and bugs like greenfly which they feed to their larvae, and generally keep my garden midge free. Thank you, wasps. ¹