Thursday, 14 November 2019
Is It The Wettest I've Recorded?
A few more wet days this week kept us indoors although we did make one trip to the plot to harvest some fresh vegetables.
At the end of another wet day Sue asked me if it was the wettest spell of weather that we'd had since installing my weather station 10 years ago. I wasn't all that sure what the answer was.
12 Monthly Rainfall Totals 2010 -2019
I had this chart which tracks the rainfall we've had in the preceding 12 months. This means that at the end of this November it will show the rainfall over the period December 2018 to November 2019. Looking at the chart above the wettest 12 month period was April 2012 to March 2013 with 926.1mm (36 in) of rainfall. The red line indicates the average rainfall over a 12 month period. As that seemed rather a long time scale I decided to check out our wettest 6 month and 3 months periods and produce a similar chart for each.
6 Monthly Rainfall Totals 2010 -2019
This didn't produce a vastly different result with the wettest 6 month spell from April - September 2012 giving 564.7mm (22in) of rainfall.
3 Monthly Rainfall Totals 2010 -2019
Once again the wettest 3 month period fell within that very wet 12 month spell of weather with 322.5mm (13in) of rainfall through June, July and August 2012.
The answer to Sue's question then is that it isn't the wettest spell of weather we've had over the last 10 year which occurred through the summer months of 2012.
Saturday, 16 November 2019
Coldest & Wettest November by Mid-Month
We've now arrived at the middle of November and we have managed only one dry day in the first half of the month. Without doubt the rainfall has been our major stumbling block as far as getting any autumn jobs done on the plot. The ground is too wet to dig and walking over our grass paths quickly converts them from grass paths to mud paths. We did visit last week but only to do a little bit of harvesting as we needed some fresh vegetables.
All the root vegetables need a good wash before bringing them home as they come out of the ground covered with wet soil. The carrots are badly damaged by slugs but the parsnips are free of pest damage even if a few are oddly shaped. As we didn't have a lot to do on the plot I even had time to photograph some of the allotment wildlife.
All the wet weather has rather drawn attention away from the temperatures this month which have been well below average. The result is that as we have arrived at the mid point of the month this is the coldest and wettest November I've recorded at this stage.
Mid-November Temperature & Rainfall Data 2010-2019
I'm hoping that the second half of the month will see some sort of improvement. Obviously, we're not going to get any warm days as we approach the start of meteorological winter, but some dry sunny days would be much appreciated.
Tuesday, 19 November 2019
Wet Spell Turns To Cold Spell
The good news is that for a few days at least we've got rid of the cold, dull and damp weather and swapped it for much sunnier and drier days. The downside is that it's turned colder with overnight frosts.
Tuesday morning saw our coldest autumn morning of the year as the temperature fell to -3.2°C or 26.2°F. It was the coldest temperature since the beginning of February this year and the coldest November temperature since 29 November 2016 when the temperature fell to -3.6° or 25.5°F.
Temperature Records 17-19 November 2019
The good news is that we managed a trip to the plot on Monday afternoon to harvest a few vegetables and do a few little jobs as well. I decided to dig over part of our old strawberry bed even though the ground was extremely wet after all the rain. All through last summer this bed was too compacted to dig over and it wasn't possible to get either a fork or a spade in the bone dry ground to dig it over. At least now the ground is much softer making digging possibly.
I'm hoping some winter frosts and more rain will break down the soil by next spring and that the ground will be in good enough condition for planting a crop of potatoes. I'll have to wait until next spring to see if my plan comes to fruition.
Wednesday, 20 November 2019
Coldest November Day Since 2010
After that very cold start I posted about yesterday the temperature never really got very high all day.
Temperature Records for 19 November 2019
The day's average temperature was 0.5°C (32.9°F) making it the lowest November average since 30 November 2010 when the temperature fell to -0.2°C or 31.6°F. It was a cold crisp sort of a day with some hazy wintry sunshine so we decided on a trip to RHS Harlow Carr.
It wasn't a day for taking too long to compose your photograph. This pond still had ice cover in the middle of the afternoon. Certainly most of the trees are now into winter mode having shred their leaves.
The forecast is for the temperatures to gradually recover through the week before it turns wet once again by the weekend.