Monday, 14 October 2019
Gardening Activities Have Stopped!
We've had more rain over the last week, enough to put a stop to visits to the plot. We've managed only 2 dry days so far in October. Whilst we've had more rain over the last week it's not been in large amounts but enough each day to keep the already saturated ground saturated. By Sunday night October's rainfall has already amounted to 46.8mm (1.84in) and is already above October's average for the last 10 years.
Temperatures have staged a bit of a recovery over the last week but still only October 2012 remains colder at this point in the month. We've just had a couple of days where the daytime temperature has reached what we might expect at this time of the year. The recovery in the average daily temperature has been due to some milder nights.
We haven't visited the plot since my last blog post when we cut back the hazel and cobnut trees and began removing the honeyberry bushes. We'll need to visit soon to harvest a few fresh vegetables. There's plenty of jobs to be getting on with both at the allotment and in the garden but we need a spell of better weather before we can make a start on them.
We did have a day out on Saturday heading up to Cumbria and then to the Settle to Carlisle Railway line to do a little bit of steam train photography. We managed to find some heavy showers in Cumbria but at Ribblehead Viaduct conditions were much better with some sunny spells. I've included our video of 6201 Princess Elizabeth working hard on the climb up to Shap summit on the West Coast Main Line and then as she crosses the famous Ribblehead Viaduct on the picturesque Settle to Carlisle railway line.
6201 Princess Elizabeth crossing Ribblehead Viaduct - The Cumbrian Mountain Express
There still doesn't seem to be much improvement in the forecast for the next week but there seems to be the possibility of some drier weather towards the end of the month.
Wednesday, 16 October 2019
A Cold October So Far!
Gardening activities have gone on hold due to the wet weather. In the last 24 days we've managed just 3 dry days and a rainfall total of 129.9mm (5.11in) or the best part of 3 months rainfall in a little over 3 weeks.
The rainfall isn't the only thing though, as it's been an unusually cool start to the month as well. Daytime temperatures have really struggled to reach anything like average values for October.
High Temperature October 2010 - 2019
The image above shows part of my table of daytime high temperatures for the last 10 Octobers. The highest October daytime temperature for each year is shown in the red box. At the moment a value of 15.9°C (60.6°F) is the lowest value over those 10 years.
The second table below shows the temperature record for this year with the monthly high temperatures indicated in the red box.
Temperature Records for 2019
Amazingly, only January has a lower daytime high temperature with even February managing one day reaching 16.9°C or 62.4°F. At least, night time temperatures have held up reasonably well, with the exception of the third of the month when it fell to 1.6°C or 34.9°F. Perhaps this means we are due a couple of nice warm days before the month is out, however, the weather models are suggesting a cold snap towards the end of the month rather than any warmer weather.