Saturday 08 February 2014
Well Watered
Saturday was a sunny day but with a cold strong blustery breeze. It stayed dry until late afternoon when some squally showers arrived.
Since then the sometimes heavy showers have continued through the night and into Sunday morning.
Our pots of hostas over-
Sunday and Monday 09/10 February 2014
Missed Out
We were busy decorating last week and I must admit to keeping only a cursory eye over my weather records. It was only over the weekend that I spotted that I’d almost missed an all time low for my weather station. At 18:30 on Saturday 8th February the barometric pressure fell to 963.1Mb taking over from 967.7Mb set on 8th November 2010 as the lowest its recorded.
At the time the weather didn’t do anything very spectacular, it didn’t pour down with rain and the wind wasn’t particularly strong.
Monday morning was a bit unusual for this winter as we had a proper frost with the temperature below freezing down to -
It was at its coldest at 08:00 and I should have managed a photograph of the frost on the grass or ice on the bird bath but our plan was to get the decorating at my sister in laws finished today so it was a quick get away on Monday morning.
As it happens Monday turned out a lovely sunny February day with some sunshine and very light winds. It felt pleasant in the afternoon sunshine as we visited the recycling centre with our decorating rubbish.
Pity the forecast for the rest of the week isn’t for more of the same. Instead more wind and rain on the way with the possibility of some light snow showers.
Tuesday 11 February 2014
Bittern Spotted
Tuesday was a horrible wet and cold morning but it brightened up a little bit in the afternoon before more showers spread in after dark.
We were lucky enough to see a Bittern today but it wasn’t the difficult to spot birding variety. This was a big blue steam locomotive. Easy to spot if you know a time and a place.
Now as everyone knows we’ve all had lots of rain and its caused some severe flooding in some parts of the country. The talk on TV and in newspapers is as though it’s always like this and it will never end. Hard to image then that back in the summer months it wouldn’t have been possible to see a steam locomotive operating under its own steam like this in Yorkshire. It was considered so dry that the sparks emitted in the smoke would set off line side fires. This did happen before the ban came into place.
This is a steam locomotive operating over the same stretch of line at the end of August 2013. Note that there’s no smoke and that diesel engine tucked in behind is doing all the work. But now all that has changed and we’ve more water than we know what to do with.
Once we were back home the sun came out and I thought it would be a good chance to try for a photograph of one of our female blackbirds. For some reason they seem rather more elusive than the 4 or 5 males we see regularly chasing one another around the garden.
I didn’t manage to capture a female as you can see. This is one of “Hoppy’s” rivals as they fight for rights to food on the bird table and a suitable female for mating. As for the females they seemed to be in short supply today so someone may be unlucky.
Wednesday 12 February 2014
Battered!
Wednesday turned out to be wet and stormy as after a day of rain we were battered by storm force winds for much of the evening and into the early hours of Thursday morning.
In all we had 9.6mm of rain bringing the monthly total up to 45.2mm which is about what we’d expect in the whole month. The wind was certainly the worst feature with storm force winds from around 17:00 Wednesday evening through to 03:00 on Thursday morning. This time we weren’t so lucky at avoiding any damage.
A large junk of mortar was dislodged from our neighbours roof and finished up on our car’s bonnet.
It’s made a couple of pretty large dents where it hit and then broke into several pieces. So it’s a trip to the garage this morning for an estimate for repairing the damage.
As for the greenhouse at home that’s another story. I’m rather dreading a visit to the plot to see what havoc it wreaked there.
Thursday 13 February 2014
Checking for Damage
Thursday was a lovely sunny if cold February day, a complete contrast to the horrendous weather we had on Wednesday. In truth the wind hadn’t died down completely and it was a bit blustery at times. It clouded over in the middle of the afternoon just enough to produce a light shower.
After finding a small part of our neighbour’s roof had fallen onto our car I thought I’d better have a look and see if there was any other damage from yesterday’s gales. I could tell before I got to the garden greenhouse that some of the roof had been blown out. There was no way the glass could be that clean. Sure enough three large roofing panels had been lifted out and deposited in pieces on the path behind the greenhouse. There’s not much I can do as a temporary repair and I need to give a bit of thought to a longer term repair. I’ll just have to hope that the forecast storms don’t do too much extra damage.
It was a nice afternoon and, as we hadn’t visited the plot since the middle of January, we were in need of some fresh vegetables so we decided to check out the plot and also recce all the potential storm damage. We were pleasantly surprised that both our shed and 0plot greenhouse had survived the gales intact.
The plot’s very wet with even our grass paths making a squelchy sound under our wellies. The vegetables have stood up to the battering and rain pretty well. First on the list for lifting “Chantenay Royal” carrots. Having lifted part of our final row I decided to go for broke and finish lifting all of this variety left in the ground and freeze some for using before our summer crop is ready.
They were certainly large but their condition was unknown as they were lifted from their rather muddy winter home. After a wash a few needed to be added to the compost heap but they were mostly in a decent condition for using in the kitchen.
They weighed in at 4.94kg once sorted and still taste good, as we gave them a taste test at dinner time. I think I’ve now lifted all our “Chantenay Royals”. That means with our summer and autumn harvest this variety has produced 17.6kg of carrots. Decent organic carrots in the local supermarket are around £1.20/kg giving us a crop worth £21.08. Not bad from a £0.60 packet of seed. I know I’ve got the investment in time, some environmesh and weed to control fabric to take into account but I reckon with a bit of care they’ll last a good 10 years each. The environmesh is probably in need of a jet wash this spring but it will then be as good as new.
We also managed to harvest some sprouts, red and green cabbage together with a few leeks to keep us supplied with fresh vegetables for a few days. By then it would be nice to think that the worst of this lousy wet and windy weather would be over and that some drier settled weather will have arrived. If only!
Friday 14 February 2014
Another Wet and Windy Afternoon
Friday morning wasn’t too bad, well at least in was dry, but that only lasted to around lunchtime when it began to rain again. Another 8.4mm of rain today took us up to 53.8mm, above 47.8mm our expected rainfall for the month, and and we’re only just over half way through the month.
As you can see from the table it’s rained most days but without any excessive daily amounts. None of these days gets into the Ossett top 30 wettest days in the last four years. To get into 30th position more than 13.0mm is required and to get to top spot it has to beat 06 July 2012 with 39.2mm.
The real problems have been caused by the gale force winds which seem to have battered us nearly every day. I think that damage can be caused by continuously strong winds as well as one off extreme gusts.
This is my own little chart for keeping track of windy weather. It tracks how many gusts have been recorded by my anemometer. With a couple of weeks still to go this month it is already the windiest February I’ve recorded. The forecast does seem to be suggesting more settled weather is on the way so perhaps the January 2012 record may not be broken.
On a brighter note my quest to capture some decent images of our female blackbirds goes on in our brighter spells of weather.
This one was just having a bath sprucing herself up for Valentines Day. Out of interest I saw Hoppy and a female blackbird sitting close up on a branch and they weren’t squabbling so I wonder if Hoppy has managed to pull.