Drought - Summer - 2018?

[Jordan S]

Grass is still entirely brown here in Aylesbury with wilting trees some horse chestnuts here have gone brown and started to shed their leaves the ponds are dried up too hope it rains in the next few days forgot what green grass looks like.

[Snowyowl9]

Ground is so hard still,raining bouncing off it,lawn is greening up more somewhat to what is was since that rain the other week.

20mm behind 2006 here yet after we did have a wet start to june with nearly an inch of rain from thundery showers june 1st and 2nd.

There were some pretty wet spells august 2006 with nearly 1 inch recorded 1 day,will have to see how this pans out,driest summer since 2006 or 1976.

Charts look very unsettled now.

Edited August 11, 2018 by Snowyowl9

[hillbilly]

What has made this drought so severe for growers and trees particularly is the lack of rainfall during the 'fastest growth'period.That being May and June.1976 had rather a wet May and 1995 although a relatively dry May ,faired better than this year.What happened is grass and trees drank the ground dry during May and June ,that with almost no rainfall and endless very watm and sunny days have left the country parched worse than 1976 and 1995 up until now.It will however be a wetter summer than 1995 and probably 1976  but 2018 will go down as the driest May to August than any other.

[Snowyowl9]

Not here it was extremely wet end of may into early june from those severe thunderstorms 3 inches of rain in that short period localized.

[Summer Sun]

 

[Aleman]

That seems strange. It has been very dry this summer and most of autumn but the last 3 or 4 weeks have seen rivers fill up until flood plains are now "puddling" and everywhere is muddy. The last chart here shows the reservoir levels starting to recover strongly from a low level and I'd expect another couple of weeks of strong rises, given very recent persistent rain which is still finding its way into water courses. An application for a drought permit would have made sense a month ago but seems odd just now  - unless they somehow know it is going to be dry for a month and I doubt that!

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/762892/Yorkshire_Water_Situation_Report_November_2018.pdf

 

[The PIT]

On 10/12/2018 at 17:02, Summer Sun said:

 

Seems odd it is so low. A wet spring and Autumn here which I why I was surprised to hear it was so low. What I'm suspecting is that the demands on the water supply have increased a lot in recent years so even a wet autumn following a dry summer isn't enough to bring the levels up. I mean the rivers like Lathekill are running the full length and have been for a while so the water table can't be that low. I used to visit Goyt a lot and in recent years it always seems low. Would be interesting to see how much water demand has increased in recent years.

[4wd]

Ground water seems to be still surprisingly low, here we are only 100mm down on the year but land conditions are still much drier than is expected this time of year.
Just a bit wet and sticky on top in places.

[Summer Sun]