This amazing story about weather wizzard TP O'Connor was originally published in 2014:
West Kerry: Ireland has had two record-breaking summers and both were predicted by West Kerry philosopher and weather predictor TP O’Connor.
If he was a baseball player he’d be batting a thousand and he has the hottest streak going in the weather prediction business.
O’Connor – a politician, publican, local historian and most importantly cheerleader for his beloved West Kerry especially the hinterland beyond Dingle – is adamant that climate change is at work in Ireland.
“Finest summer since 1955” he told me as we sat in the pub run by his son Sean Brendan O’Connor and tourists from Austria, Germany, and the USA sat outside sipping Guinness and gazing at Ballydavid beach and the wild Atlantic swell.
It really has been a glorious summer despite predictions by the ”professionals” that Ireland was in for a long wet one.
O’Connor saw it differently though.
Now 70 he looks like he is straight out of Irish Tourist Board poster with twinkling blue eyes and a quick sense of humor.
He is a fount of gossip and wisdom and has built a fine business on the back of his skills.
He is also a songwriter, once penning the Irish entry in the Pan Celtic Song Contest and there is no one with a better sense of the history of West Kerry than him.
But it is calling the weather that has made him famous.
Every story about him over the years leads with the rare talent he has to predict the weather, that most unpredictable aspect of Irish daily life.
There are few parts of the world where the weather is as unpredictable and changeable as Kerry, first stop for the low and high-pressure systems coming in from the Atlantic. Sometimes predicting an hour ahead, let alone a summer, can be difficult.
He has been called “Ireland’s weather wizard” by the London Daily Mirror and has rarely been wrong to the point where the Weather Channel might well avail of his services.
He told the Daily Mirror at the start of one summer that the key was the dolphins coming in.
"The dolphins are in – we might as well start getting the swimming trunks out now," insisted the publican from Ballydavid, Co Kerry.
"It's great to see them coming in. Everything is right at the moment. They arrived a few days ago and if they stay two weeks then we'll have a glorious summer.
Sure enough they did and a scorching summer followed.
He says the same way that animals and sea life can predict earthquakes tsunamis and natural disasters they also know which way the weather is going to be.
He says we are all too busy to stand back and appreciate what we can learn from animals.
He is right in that and he has a rare gift, a walking weather barometer that rarely gets it wrong.
They say there is a man in Donegal who can match him, but my money is on TP. Dry or wet, the wit and wisdom is unbeatable.
* Originally published in 2014.
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