Tuesday, 03 September 2019
Meteorological Autumn Begins
The first couple of days have certainly had an autumnal feel to them with overnight temperatures down into single figures. We made the most of a couple of warm days at the end of August visiting Sandringham Estate and the North Norfolk Railway.
Sandringham Estate
North Norfolk Railway
Both visits were enjoyable although I was a little disappointed with some parts of the Sandringham Estate. The visit to the railway's steam gala didn't go without any problems either as they'd had a few "technical problems" which meant the trains weren't running to the timetable. The staff were very helpful though so it didn't cause us any problems.
September sees the start of meteorological autumn so it's time to have a look at August's temperature and rainfall comparisons over the last 10 years as well as the last 10 years' summers.
August Temperatures and Rainfall Records 2010-2019
I shouldn't be surprised that this August finished up the warmest of the last 10 years. It started off on the warm side with a cooler spell in the middle and ended on a very hot note with 26 August becoming the hottest August day I've recorded when the temperature reached 31.2°C or 88.2°F. I'm more surprised to find out how dry August was. We had 18 days with some rainfall which probably made it seem wetter than it actually was. Obviously, we didn't have much rainfall on most of those 18 days. I was surprised how dry the ground was when I was lifting a row of potatoes towards the end of the month. To confuse things even more we had our windiest August day on 15 August when the wind was strong enough to bring down one of our apple trees.
Summer Temperature and Rainfall Records 2010-2019
Temperature wise it's been a pretty good summer for us but obviously it didn't match up to last year's glorious summer weather. Once again I'm rather surprised it's so high up in the amount of rainfall through summer. There's certainly been times when the allotment and garden seemed very dry although you wouldn't think it from the rainfall figures.
I'm hoping to get our remaining potatoes lifted before any really wet weather arrives. The weather forecast for the next week to ten days looks to be unsettled with showers rather than any spells of heavy rain and the temperatures look to be slightly below average so no excuses for not getting the last of the potatoes lifted.