Last month was the sunniest April on record in Donegal for 34 years and one Finn Valley weather guru is predicting that all the signs are good for a summer full of plentiful warm sunshine this year.

That’s according to Michael Gallagher, Glenfin’s long serving postman, who believes that Donegal will be soaking up the rays this year with glorious weather predicted. As a well-known and avid weather watcher, Michael believes that there will certainly be no repeat of last year’s summer washout this time around.

“A good summer is on the cards as all the signs look positive. As everyone knows, the problem last year was that we had our summer in April and then nothing more afterwards so it was a disaster. We can all look forward to hot weather this year with a bit of thunder and lightning, which will do no harm. After very cold weather and hail subsiding recently and sunny weather coming through in recent days, everything looks to be in favour of a good summer, and we deserve it.”

Met Eireann’s monthly weather summary for April revealed that a total of 202 sunshine hours were recorded at the county’s station at Malin Head during last month. This made it the sunniest April here since 1974.

Donegal’s sunniest day of the month was on April 16 with just over 13 hours recorded at Malin Head. The country’s lowest monthly total was 167 hours at Birr, Co. Offaly.

And while this county bashed in rays of sunshine, the rest of Ireland was forced to endure a mixture of snow, frequent thunderstorms, hail showers, frost and fog.

However, Donegal had its fair share of wind with the strongest gales of the month measured on April 1st, when the highest gust of 60 knots (111 km/h) was recorded at Malin Head.

Met Eireann’s monthly weather summary also showed that temperatures of between 7 and 9 degrees generally were the lowest for April for up to eight years.

So looking ahead to summer, here’s hoping Michael’s predictions of many sunny days ahead ring true in the Finn Valley.