TEN YEARS AGO, parts of Ireland were cursed with the wettest summer in fifty years.
“Washout summer beats winter with 49 days’ rain in a row,” bleated The Irish Times. “Rain pours cold water on high society’s big season,” moaned the Sunday Independent. RTÉ’s The Afternoon Show even enlisted an expert to advise Irish people how to deal with water-logged gardens.
Some people chose to blame St. Swithin. Some chose to blame “the typical Irish summer”. And others chose to blame none other than Rihanna.
In May 2007, Rihanna released Umbrella. It went on to top the charts for eight weeks in Ireland, making it the undisputed Song of the Summer. The refrain, “You can stand under my umbrella-ella-ella, ey-ey-ey” was inescapable and could be heard from car radios, shop stereos and youth discos for the entire summer.
That same summer, Met Éireann reported higher rainfall totals than normal.
Summer rainfall totals were above normal everywhere and were well above normal over the eastern half of the country. It was the wettest summer for at least nine years generally and the wettest for around fifty years at stations in Leinster…
Irish people have a tendency to overreact about the weather, but the complaining was warranted in this instance. It pretty much rained constantly.
Rainfall was recorded over some parts of the country on each day between June 11th and July 29th, with a spell of 33 successive raindays (days with 0.2mm or more rainfall) recorded in Dublin during this period.
So, to recap: Rihanna released a song called Umbrella and Ireland had the wettest summer in years. Surely it couldn’t be a coincidence, right? Rihanna must have summoned some sinister rainclouds to piss all over our summer. There was no other logical explanation.
A thread on FeckThat.com from 2007 posited the question: ‘rihanna and the rain, coincidence or not’
a few weeks ago on the radio a guy was sayin how rihannas umbrella ella ella song came into the charts as the rain started in ireland and england during the summer and she might be the cause. i thought funny weird guy on the radio with weird theory. however is it a coincidence that she was knocked off the number 1 spot in the charts on friday and now the summer has arrived.today was the nicest day yet, and i didn’t hear that song once. thats strange.
A decade may have passed, but that summer still lingers in the Irish consciousness and some still harbour a slight grudge towards Rihanna.
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Lesson?
Never release a song about rain in the summer.
