Incredible scenes this evening as an organised band of rain made its way eastwards only for it to dive slightly south over Lichfield or fizzle out altogether.

Was expecting at last to measure a few mm of rain. Instead I’ve counted the number of individual raindrops that fell.

Browsing the 53 days of drought Beast mentions in Purley seems to be the highest figure out there. Anyone else been dry for longer?

Absolute drought ended in the strictest sense, though to be honest the rain spots hardly covered the patio.

drought survives again! perhaps another 7 days before the plume hits and then it will probably end

A few (literally) drops of rain yesterday afternoon and nothing in the evening with the fragmenting band making it to within about 20 miles of Berkhamsted. 

Like you, rain came very close to my back yard on occasion but didn’t quite make it.  My absolute drought stretched from 30th May and ended in a damp squib last night 20th July.  It’s a bit annoying that it ended my record but did nothing to alleviate ground conditions and water levels.  Although it was nice to smell the rain as it approached and that damp vegetation smell afterwards.  It’s funny how you notice things more when they’ve been absent.

In Nottinghamshire farmers grow a lot of carrots, potatoes and beet and I wonder what kind of harvest they’ll have this year. 

The absolute drought ended last night. A solitary sunflower we planted has grown overnight almost like Jacks bean. Well the leaves have not quite doubled in size but notably expanded.

It's 'only' 33 days for us....

Very similar here except that we had a couple of spots of rain <1mm on a couple of days in June. May 28th was the last appreciable rainfall.

Grass is parched everywhere and trees now showing obvious signs of drought stress.

I was also watching the rain band last night and of course it fizzled out before it reached Cambridge. 

Isn't the countryside looking completely parched? The mixture of clay and chalk, with a few stone flints thrown in, make for a spectacular scene in the rolling hills around the Gog Magog. We really need to some rain though but nothing forthcoming next week.

Can we break the record?

Driving down the A10 the countryside is beginning to take on a rather Spanish feel in June. The grass is bleached but the bushes and trees are hanging on. Exchange the tree species and you may as well be driving in Andalusia!

We had 2 -3 hrs of light rain yesterday. It wasn't that much but there are still puddles on the flat roof of the building over the road from me. My lawn has actually started greening up again, probably due to the torrential rain we had last Monday.

I don't like heat but I can put up with it if we get some more thunderstorms.

No rain in N Norfolk still. Good for the harvest as it’s all been done, bad for the lake near us as the water level has dropped about 10 inches, and the small fish starting to die. Can’t seem to find a site that records rainfall for this area (Cromer) as nearest is Norwich and we have different weather here on the coast!

Would take another 30 days if the record is 73. Doesn't seem impossible to be honest!

It’s obviously a great year so far for the wine makers, with perfect flowering conditions, no disease and no late frost unlike last year. However, we are getting to the stage where yields could actually be suppressed by drought. That’s really quite remarkable.

For a great vintage you need a mild and wet spring, dry sunny weather for flowering in mid June with not much wind, rain in July to plump the grapes up, then hot sunny weather in August and September.

We are missing the rain in July bit. Fine if you’re growing Grenache or Marsanne, not fine if you’re growing Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.

A low yielding, over-ripe vintage with low acidity would be quite a turn up for the books. Champagne has been dealing with this for years but one of the advantages of England for sparkling wine has been the mixture of phenolic ripeness and zippy acidity.

You can't be too far from me, it only just about wet the surfaces here and there was nothing measurable in my rain gauge

Am I correct in thinking that you can get a very good quality wine from drought conditions? It probably depends on the grape though

No, only a few miles. We seem to have got lucky here - there was also a fair bit when I drove over the Chevin to Otley yesterday - I say a fair bit but that's in the context of how dry it's been, ordinarily it would be just some patchy rain!

How much did you get on Monday? We had about 3-4 hours of steady rain with two bursts of torrential stuff.

From trying to dig them up I know how far down the roots go, so I guess they are finding plenty of water.