After an average to damp start to summer, particularly in the South West, much of the country that’s our Southern next door neighbour is now at crisis levels of agricultural drought, which is rapidly turning into hydrological drought. At the start of October many regions have drier soils and yellower vegetation than they usually do in early August.

This is an interactive map so you need to click on soil moisture / anomaly on the left and zoom in.

http://edo.jrc.ec.europa.eu/edov2/php/index.php?id=1111

For French speakers some news coverage:

https://twitter.com/meteofrance/status/1045680543730421760?s=21

https://www.boursorama.com/actualite-economique/actualites/secheresse-la-carte-des-restrictions-d-eau-en-france-592ca7c7f02642e7e577226676c4a2d9

https://www.reussir.fr/bovins-viande/actualites/la-secheresse-fait-craindre-une-acceleration-des-sorties:097BT2ED.html

The U.K. has been relatively well watered since early August but this drought extends across much of northern and Western Europe. 

In the area around my holiday home in Saone et Loire there are a lot of cattle farms - it’s an industry that was already a little unsustainable but the last 5 summers have all had periods of drought and stressed grass - even 2016 that saw flooding in early June - and I think this is going to accelerate a drift away from livestock and maize back to viticulture (it’s a mix of vines and cows around us), wheat and orchards.

An interesting thread Tim.

Here in SE Kent (22 miles from the French coast) September has been a surprisingly dry month. 

In September we experienced 23 dry days and only 4 days resulting in > 1.0mm.

The green shoots of recovery in August have turned a little more amber in recent weeks 

Gusty's observation also supported by my own experience here in west Kent, and by a reply to Tim S's post in the MO thread:

I hope it won't be taking this thread O/T to extend the boundary of discussion of the French drought to include the extreme SE England.  I went for a walk through some woodland on Tuesday, and the ground was littered with leaves from the trees which had gone brown and fallen off before turning colour.  And the trees and shrubs in my garden are looking distinctly stressed from lack of water.

I've been meaning to ask here on TWO if anyone can produce rainfall records (professional or amateur) for this year for anywhere in west Kent.  I don't keep such records myself, and I haven't been able to find anything from my (probably inept) internet search.  My impression is that, apart from the rain a couple of weekends ago, we've had hardly any since April, with August - although a lot cooler and cloudier than early summer - still being pretty dry.

Angus

Just click the link at the bottom for my weather station stats for South Tonbridge, data there going back to 2005

I think this map (from DWD) gives a nice, if rough idea as to which regions of Europe were hit hardest by the summer drought conditions (map for September has not been released yet, but should be in the next few days) 

https://www.unitedutilities.com/help-and-support/your-water-supply/reservoir-levels/ 

Can also count south Hampshire in with that too.

 Very dry still.

Rather than start a new thread, I'll carry on the extension of this one in covering the extreme SE of England.

Thanks to Warrenb for the link to his PWS data on Weather Underground, I can now quote the rainfall figures for South Tonbridge, and they confirm my impressions given in my previous post.

I have extracted monthly figures from this PWS data, and for each month I give the total precipitation, and in brackets the figures quoted by Gusty (Steve) from Folkestone in his sig. for comparison. Then the number of totally dry days each month (0.0mm), and the number of days with > 1.0mm of rain. Lastly from May onwards, I give the wettest day and associated rainfall total.

2018

Jan   68.6mm   (86.4mm) 12 dry days, 14 days > 1.0mm

Feb   32.3mm   (58.2mm) 11               10

Mar   66.8mm   (83.2mm) 11               12

Apr   47.8mm (113.4mm) 13                11

May  66.8mm   (57.6mm) 17                  9                   Wettest 29th 26.2mm

Jun     1.3mm     (7.0mm) 27                 0                               7th, 12th, 0.5mm

Jul     13.7mm   (18.8mm) 24                 4                              30th 6.1mm

Aug   18.0mm   (85.6mm)   4                 4                              15th 1.8mm

Sep   29.5mm   (34.8mm) 14                 4                              23rd 11.7mm

Oct*    9.7mm                    8                 2                              6th 7.1mm

*to date

Points to note:

1) August was indeed much drier here than at Folkestone, just as I thought, with only 18.0mm compared to Gusty's 85.6mm. (And the difference in April is equally marked.)

2) Since the end of May (135 days) here we have had only 14 days with more than 1.0mm rain and 121 days with 0.0 to 1.0mm (of which 77 days recorded no precip. at all); with a total of 62.2mm in over 4 months.

3) Since the soaking on 29th May we have had one day with more than 10mm of rain.

That seems pretty dry to me. I'll have to leave it to others to produce what is the average figure for this part of the country. Another local observation is that I have a natural groundwater-fed spring in my garden, and for the first time in my memory (extending back a few decades) it has dried up completely.

Looking at the rainfall radar over the past couple of days, which part of England is again missing the rain? Yup - south and east of London, and East Anglia.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/747231/Water_Situation_Report_KSL__September_2018.pdf 

It's a good job that Bewl Water reservoir was built, otherwise we might have had some water restrictions in this part of the country this summer.

Angus

forget that 

Thorney Island..

June 27 days without rain. Of the 3 days with rain 2 days only saw 0.25mm. Month total was 3.8mm.

July 27 days again with out rain. The rain fell on the last 4 days of the month. The monthly total was 27.94mm. One of those days only had 0.25mm fall.

August was a wet one.. 11 days saw rain fall totalling 106.7mm. Of the 11 wet days 3 of them had under 1mm, but 2 of them were very wet days - 45.7mm & 33.53mm.

I should point out these stats are from midnight to midnight and not cross days as the met office do their end of day figures.

September saw 6 days of rain falling however 3 of them saw under 1mm. The monthly total was just 24.89mm.

Going back to spring..

May was average with 12 days of rain totalling 38.6mm with 5 days seeing under 1mm.

April was a wet month with 16 days of rain and a monthly total of 64mm, and only 4 days seeing under 1mm.

March was very wet with 24 days of rain totalling 90.42mm, and only 5 days seeing under 1mm.

January was a wet month with 85.1mm

February was dry with only 36.31mm.

To summarise of the 92 days of official summer rain fell on only 18 days. Of those 18 days rainfall totalling 1mm or more only happened on 12 occasions! Total amount for the summer was 138.44mm... 96.76mm fell on 3 days.