Mary McCarthy the Weather Woman of Mizen

I love a storm because everyone’s talking about it... or a bit of snow.

EIMEAR O’DWYER talks to Mary McCarthy, who is these days known as The Weather Woman of Mizen.

‘I used to put up a little forecast in the mornings, this is all during COVID now – oh it might rain Saturday, go out Friday evening, or Sunday will be lovely and that’s how it took off. I started doing it on my page in a proper forecast and then I was getting loads and loads of requests on my private page…’ explained Mary McCarthy.

The West Cork fondly known as The Weather Woman of Mizen had to enlist the help of her son as demand for her reports rose.

They set up a forecasting page on Instagram and Facebook, and it mushroomed from there.

From farming, to walks, to hanging out laundry – locals all over the peninsula and further afield seek out Mary’s weather reports daily.

She told how she’s even had people come up to her in shops and cafés to tell her that they rely on her weather reports for their daily tasks.

Mary and her dad Paddy

‘The ordinary plain people want to get through the day,’ she noted, and so she keeps her reports ‘plain, simple and easy to understand’.

Passion for the weather came early for Mary: ‘I remember listening to the shipping forecast when I was about three I’d say or four,’ she revealed, adding with a laugh, that she used to think millibars were penny bars.

‘You see I’ve always had an interest in the weather really, since I was very small, like four or five – I used to be up in my bedroom, looking out the window, looking for snow. I used to drive my uncle insane.’

She recalls asking him continually, ‘Will it snow tonight?’ as soon as the winter season started.

A lot of Mary’s passion for and knowledge of the weather comes from her uncle who was a fisherman and her father Paddy, who is 84 and still fishes three or four months of the year.

During the summertime in Mary’s childhood, Paddy and her uncle would ask her to get them the weather report for their days of fishing and
farming.

‘My uncle would be west in Crookhaven fishing, and I would have to get the forecast for them then,’ she says. ‘I knew all the weather charts from a very early age like. So, I used to be forecasting the weather when I was six or seven, and then I learned the direction of the winds, the strengths of them, any storms then that came you know… I was always into that.’

Although Mary has no formal qualification in weather reporting, she has amassed decades of experience, getting up at 5am to listen to the first Met Éireann reports of the day, as well as studying YouTube videos and weather patterns.

‘It’s the timing of the weather that I kind of do for down here,’ says Mary. As there is usually a disparity between national weather reports and what actually occurs locally.

From Paddy, Mary has also learned signs of oncoming weather that can’t be found on weather forecasts.

Bad signs of weather are signalled by a broken rainbow, or a ring around the moon, she explained.

‘A broken rainbow in the morning, a small one, not a big one and you could see it anywhere north, east, south or west,’ said Mary. ‘A ring around the moon at night-time, a perfect circle, but that circle will never be fully closed and whatever side it broken at, that’s the direction the wind will come tomorrow,’ she added.

Other types of weather are harder to ascertain, however. ‘Predicting showers is like predicting bubbles in a saucepan of boiling water. You can never ever get it 100% right,’ she admitted.

Good weather, according to Mary, can be signalled by an abundant influx of swallows in the summer. And more locally, Mary has cues from West Cork nature that signal good weather.

A hazy fog between Cape Clear, Horse Island and Castle Island, often comes due to heat, and usually signals beautiful weather ahead. An orange sunset on Cape Clear could also insinuate a bout of good weather, she noted.

‘When the sun would set in the evening and light up Cape Clear an orange colour and that would be a good sign of the weather.’

When asked for her favourite type of climate, Mary admits that – bucking the trend – for her storms and snow are personal favourites.

‘I love a storm because everyone starts talking about it. It becomes the height,’ she said. ‘It’s a great conversation starter… and definitely a storm or a snowstorm, anything to do with snow I do love it because we don’t get it that often.’

Regardless of the forecast, the future for Mary’s Mizen Weather is bright, and she is staying grounded amidst the whirlwind of increasing followers and interviews. ‘I’m just playing it by ear, going along with the flow,’ she shrugged.