Just did a bit of adding up, and it turns out that I have picked up 6.6 mm of rain since last Friday. Yes, that's a week ago (although that doesn't include the 6.2 mm that fell last Thursday). So, we are still struggling in terms of rainfall - albeit on a very localised scale. All part of us living under a rain deflector.
Winchester has picked up 59.4mm in that time period. Huge difference
Here are my stats for the first half of June. Makes for depressing reading.
But what is even more depressing is that since the hosepipe ban came into effect on 5 April (just 10 weeks ago) I have received 318mm of rain which is 47% of my normal mean rainfall for a whole year. Yet there is still a hosepipe ban in effect.
The reality is that the water companies have saved very little by having the ban in effect. I would only have needed to use a hosepipe in one of the past 10 weeks due to the amount of rain that has fallen. The reduction in usage is entirely down to the rubbish weather.
I don't care what the situation was at the start of April - if the water companies have insufficient storage capacity to capture a decent amount of the rain when it does fall then that is unacceptable. This is particularly true in those areas that rely heavily on ground water. We should have more reservoirs to capture some of the surface water.
Recent rain has made up for the deficit earlier in the year here
272.4mm for the year to date. Which is 6mm short of the total for the first 6 months of 2010 and 20mm short of the 61-90 Jan-Jun average for Stratford. So all in all, pretty much normal. Obviously the deficit from 2011 remains....
trouble is, that if you live in an area where you rely on groundwater, the reason will be that the underlying rock is of necessity porous e.g. chalk or sandstone - and it's not much use building reservoirs in a basin consisting of porous rock!