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Wednesday - Friday 20-22 February 2013
Everything On Hold
The bright sunny weather didn’t last and as forecast the last three days have been dull, cold and miserable. The temperature has just about managed to scrape above 0°C during the day but it’s felt extra cold in a bitingly cold east wind.
It means that all gardening tasks have gone on hold until some better days arrive. Fortunately the weather has been dry even though it’s been dull and cloudy. So far we haven’t had a great deal of rain in February so hopefully the soil down on the plot will be drying out a little.
This chart from my weather station gives an approximation of how much drying out might be going on. ET (mm) isn’t my own extra terrestrial but a measure of how much evaporation has taken place from the ground in general. As you can see so far this month we’ve had 34.2mm of rain and 11.7mm of that is estimated to have evaporated. I’m presuming that as we’ve had more rainfall than evaporation it’s why the soil on our plot is still wet and tacky. It’s the same story for the year with 83mm of rainfall and only 21.6mm lost to evaporation.
I’m sure some of our early spring bulbs have decided to wait for better weather. A couple of weeks ago I thought our snowdrops would be in flower but they seemed have been in a state of bud ever since then.
I’m sure that once they get a little bit of sunshine and some warmer days they’ll be bursting into bloom.
Saturday & Sunday 23-24 February 2013
Winter’s Holding On
There was no let up in the dull cold weather over the weekend. We did have just the briefest glimpse of the sun on Sunday and although the temperature only managed 4.3°C it was the highest since Tuesday 19 February.
Sadly the forecast for the week doesn’t hold out for much of an improvement. Although the temperature may get a little warmer by the end of the week it’s well below expected as we move into March and meteorological spring.
Gardening will be on hold again this week as it’s probable that more harm than good will be done trying to cultivate wet soggy soil. On the positive side our spring bulbs are continuing to make slow progress and I think the cold conditions are probably extending the flowering period of Katharine Hodgkin.
Monday - Wednesday 25-27 February 2013
Thought So
The cold dull weather continued through Monday and Tuesday but then, on Wednesday everything changed, well almost everything.the temperature still remained cold but the sun came out to brighten things up and give us hope that spring is on the way.
As I thought earlier in the week the little bit of sunshine brought out the snowdrops which seemed to have been in bud and ready to come out for a couple of weeks now.
The clear skies lasted over night into Thursday giving a sharp frost and a beautiful sunny start to Thursday.