When will the darkness lift? Impermeable grey clouds have hung in the sky for weeks now (no, that’s not a metaphor for global politics). And with each gloomy day the Irish obsession with weather has reached new heights.

When I lived in sunnier climes, I was often taken by surprise when other nationalities would stare blankly in response to “lovely day, isn’t it?”. Lines would appear across their brows in puzzlement, as if to say “yes, of course the sun is out”.

But this January the meteorological misery has permeated almost every conversation here: through the spikes of broken umbrellas at the school gates and from under flyaway hair fuzz in the office. We were “pelted on, lashed on, sopping, drowned, drenched to the skin”.

And most of all, we craved the feeling of warm sunlight on our faces. We asked “will we ever see the sun again?” (with Google searches for Ryanair and Aer Lingus up 30% this month in Ireland, many now have their answer).

At the time of writing, there have been a total of 1.5 hours of sunshine recorded at Dublin Airport weather station over the past week, that includes four days with zero sunshine. And this was even before Storm Chandra brought devastating flooding to homes and businesses particularly in Dublin, Wicklow and Wexford.

When I asked Irish people living abroad in recent weeks what they don’t miss about home, the weather cropped up over and over: from sideways rain to its unpredictability.

For Irishman Ray Farrell, living in Australia for 40 years, it was the weather on a visit to Limerick one “dismal February” which made him “realise there was no coming home”. “Sitting in a coffee shop with my brother Joe, I look across the car park into the gloom. There is a weight in the greyness of the sky that I had forgotten.”

For Australian Annalisa Cercone the weather made many think she was ludicrous to come and live in Ireland. “But the weather!” they said. “Why would anyone trade those blue skies for such grey?”

Just don’t look across the Atlantic for distraction from the pelting rain, for great storm clouds approach here, as orange thunderclaps threaten to take over Greenland while Ice showers crackdown on immigrants at a large scale. An Irish therapist living in the United States writes about how his gay and immigrant clients were growing more and more anxious in Trump’s America. “I have a tin sign in my office with that Seneca quote on it, and I look at it every day: ‘We suffer more in imagination than we do in reality’. Nice words, comforting words, challenging words, but even I know they are just words, and words often can’t stop or delay the inevitable. So yes, I too am preparing to leave the US after living here for more than two decades.”

Even in sunny Perth, where Irish doctor Elizabeth Ahern-Flynn is enjoying summer surfing at Scarborough beach, there is darkness in the wake of December’s Bondi attacks on the other side of Australia. “As I walked the foreshore, I suddenly found myself glancing at various access points a car could use to mow down pedestrians, the escape routes I could take were an attack to happen in my beloved beachside suburb.”

But there is hope as the traditional Irish (and not the meteorological) Spring begins in the coming days, with St Brigid’s Day. The evenings are getting brighter too. The sunset in January moved from 4.17pm to 5.06pm, and will be 6pm by the end of February. Cian Duggan an Irish artist in Vietnam, who spoke to me in a dark Ho Chi Minh City at 6pm his time, noted how little the sunset time varies there through the year. Duggan who has just opened a solo exhibition “kind of fell in love instantly with the place”. It has a “real life-affirming vibrancy that made sense to me … it was exactly what I was looking for”.

Irish artists have also been moving to Marseilles, writes Mary Fitzgerald. France’s oldest and second-largest city, is having a moment, attracting artists, writers, filmmakers, photographers and chefs from all around the world, including Ireland.

But it is coming to Ireland, west Cork specifically, that is London-born OBE recipient Jacqueline O’Donovan‘s “happy place”. “It’s the freedom, the fresh air, I just feel connected with it,” says the second generation Irish entrepreneur.

Catch-up: Ireland in JanuaryCiarraí Abú

From Jessie Buckley’s Golden Globe win to an Oscar Best Actress nomination for her part in the adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet, the Kerry native has been the sunshine in our month. Anne Lucey reports from an elated Killarney that she is the eldest of five from a well-known family – described as the Irish equivalent of the Von Trapps from the Sound of Music. Buckley is well-placed to become the first Irish woman ever to win the best actress prize, writes Donald Clarke. Though Rosita Boland found the film “coma-inducingly boring”.

O’Leary vs Musk

This row was vintage 2026: headlines akin to the Onion that are real life. Elon Musk asked his X followers if he should buy Ryanair (he can’t due to EU ownership rules). It came after comments Michael O’Leary made about the cost of putting Musk’s internet service Starlink on Ryanair flights (please never put internet on Ryanair planes as I’ve written about previously). Master-publicist O’Leary held a press conference and a “big idiot” sale. Frank McNally says this was a “clash of cultures” as Mark O’Connell writes of a dystopian fear that a Musk-owned Ryanair could worsen its customer service.

Irish man takes on Ice

News has been dominated by events in the US, including the killing by Ice agents of nurse Alex Pretti. But here the efforts of an Irish man abroad also made headlines. Dubliner Dominick Skinner, living in the Netherlands, has leaked the identities of thousands of Ice officers and has vowed to continue.

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