Rain Lady
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What a crazy day - lightning earlier this eve in that belt of squally heavy rain which came through the northwest. During the day a mad mix up of hot sun (briefly) and icy machine gun hail and lashing rain. Trees swaying in the spells of violent NW wind. Collected 9.0 mm this morning at 9 GMT. Current total for April is 107.6mm. Spent last few days trying to make progress with outdoor work, but everywhere is just too saturated to manage. Utterly disheartening. At a simple level the sodden veg garden is covered with thick lush weedy grass grown well in the warmer temperatures. There's no way anyone can even walk on it. But I could weep for the fields. Decades of work maintaining the network of tile drains and costing many thousands of pounds is now all for nothing. The drains have been silted up in the heavy rain since the start of July last year and it is impossible to get machinery on the land to clear them without causing damage. So now there is rush invasion taking over other species in the meadows. Even if the rain is suiddenly switched off it will be a very long time before the fields dry out and normal farming resumes. I've been told that arable farmers are also having problems. Seeds not yet in the soil. Overwintering crops ruined. I fear for food supplies whether for humans and farm animals next winter. Doubtful if places abroad can supply us reliably and cheaply when distrurbed weather patterns seem to be a worldwide problem.
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Weather-history Thanks for this -- will compare. Puzzled still -- where are the sites supplying this data? Maybe such info is in a footnote somewhere? Met Office / EA have an automatic tipper on the site next to the manual gauge here. It is wireless linked to EA HQ so they now get info quickly from this black box tech. However all sorts of debris, such as leaves, seeds, bird droppings, slugs and spiders, can occasionally make it unreliable. I've even known thieving jackdaws take away the shiny filter. Also the auto doesn't cope well with ice and snow. Just sits and sulks till it thaws. The manual gauge however is given personal attention once a day -- thawed out when frozen up etc so no readings are missed.
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severe snowstormYes, we all said last April, May, June - "We'll have to pay for this"- when the ditch bottoms were crispy and we were trying to seek shade from the blazing sun and there were no insects for the birds and the swallows had no mud for their nests. Got to keep remembering the good times and hope this current wet sunless punishment soon stops.
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Weather-history What site are you using for your region? You noted 1264.5mm rain since start of July 2023. Up here in the foothills of the Bowland Fells at 150m ASL, 500 ft approx, we've collected 1929.9 mm for the same period in the manual daily gauge on the Met Office site. Would be interesting to know what other sites in the north west have recorded.