However, you are more than welcome to give your own reports for those all important rainfall totals for this month in your area provided that you actually manage to get some rain in your area of course.

The lack of rainfall just now is of course, a real concern going forward and in the next few days, SEPA will be producing its next weekly water scarcity report for here in Scotland.

As a result, I will continue to give an update for each of those reports during the month of May on this thread in order to ensure that this thread at least carries some relevance, and doesn't get lost within the list of threads on this forum as a result of it becoming so far down that list.

As I look at the models, you might just say, "it just doesn't rain any more", full stop.

With that in mind and given how long this period of below average rainfall has gone on for now, someone might well be tempted to start a separate drought thread on here in order to highlight the ongoing concerns about possible water shortages in their area (and possibly the UK as a whole) as a result.

However, there are also others on here who would consider that to be rather silly because regardless of how long each dry spell goes on for, you just never know when the next wetter than average spell might arrive and I've seen it happen so many times in the past that a drought thread is started on here and then not long afterwards, the pattern then turns quite a lot wetter with flooding even being reported as a result.

For those reasons, I would suggest that rather than going down that road, this thread (and subsequent monthly threads after that if the current drier than average pattern continues beyond this month into the summer) should be used to provide everyone an opportunity to report any ongoing concerns in their area about any water scarcity situation which arises as a result of the ongoing lack of rainfall.

This can be done in a similar manner to how I'm giving updates on the water scarcity reports from SEPA as the Environment Agency (or a similar organisation to that) may well have a similar system for that, for dealing with water scarcity in England and other parts of the UK.

If it does actually rain at any time, that can continue to be reported on here as normal but by doubling this thread up as a place for reporting other data such as groundwater levels, river levels and any water scarcity concerns, this should ensure that this thread at least gets some activity at what would otherwise be a very quiet time as a result of that ongoing lack of rainfall.

Agreed - and with that in mind local groundwater in the Downs is exactly on normal today, but declining more rapidly than usual. 

https://sites.google.com/view/groundwatergraphs/home/groundwater-data  ]

Reservoir levels have not been updated since February when they were very full so should last out the summer - not much increase is expected in summer months as rainfall gets intercepted by growing vegetation in all but the very wettest periods.

Everything dry here but still green thankfully.

I think half of our precipitation total for this year - total is 211mm came within the first week of January in the form of snow/sleet and cold rain.  Since then been very dry.  

Glad I ordered a submersible water pump off Temu 10 days ago!

I think reservoirs are still full and ground water levels high so it would take a few more months of no rain before we need to worry, 

That’s probably true but farmers are already having to irrigate fields around here.  There are sprays in fields whichever way you turn and hardly surprising as it’s literally weeks since we had any measurable rain.  It’s been a good season for drilling though and better than last Spring when we had too much rain and fields were flooded or too waterlogged to do anything.  

Yes indeed, reminds me that news reports about drought coming from dried up resevoirs always seem to be carried out in the pouring rain!

February and March have also been very dry. The old adage , careful what you wish for ,but we do need some rain 😊💦 

The river spey is currently only 0.150 mtr off its lowest ever recorded , and considering there’s almost no snow on the mountains, it could well break that record if this dry spell continues.

The good news is that parts of the Western Isles which were at early warning status for water scarcity has now returned to normal but the Shetland Islands which were previously at normal status has now gone into early warning status for water scarcity.

Those parts of the north of Scotland which were previously at alert level for water scarcity remain unchanged in that regard and have now been joined in that category by much of east and central Scotland including here in Edinburgh.

Meanwhile, the rest of Scotland which I haven't mentioned until now is at early warning status for water scarcity.

Concerns are clearly growing at SEPA as regards to the ongoing lack of rainfall and deteriorating water scarcity situation.

There is still a few areas in the Western Isles and over to the Moray Firth area where the river flow is normal or even high but in most parts of Scotland, the river flows are now low and even extremely low in many areas, especially in the south and east of Scotland and MRayner has highlighted that situation in Speyside very well as the report also clearly shows that.

Here in Edinburgh, the grass is still fairly green for now but I don't expect that to be the case for much longer as long as we continue to see little or no rainfall, and especially if we continue to see a lot of sunshine at the same time. Across the west of Scotland, the soil moisture deficit is classed as normal for now, but is classed as quite dry across the north and east of Scotland (again, including here in Edinburgh), the Orkney Islands and the extreme SW of Scotland.

The odd member of this forum down south has reported their reservoir levels to be full for now, but that is not necessarily the case here in Scotland as the loch levels (which will therefore equate to the reservoir levels here in Scotland) are normal to quite low. Groundwater levels on the other hand are still high around Inverness but generally low to normal elsewhere and even very low in a number of locations.

Given the manner in which our rivers are drying up in particular, it is clear that some rainfall is very badly need but the latest models continue to show no signs of that whatsoever and as long as that remains the case, the situation is only going to get even worse in that regard.

Those of you who are old enough to be able to remember the exceptionally dry period of the mid-1970s which culminated in that great summer of 1976 might well remember that as a result of all of that, the Labour Government at the time went on to appoint a minister of drought in order to oversee all of that.

Almost as soon as they did so though, the heavens then opened as then went into a much wetter spell of weather from the autumn of 1976 onwards.

That shows you what can happen, and that could just as easily happen nowadays as well which is why I would be very wary about starting a separate drought thread on here.

Rather surprisingly, there are still a few locations in the west of Scotland which are still at normal level as regards to water scarcity but the area in alert status which was already covering most of the east and north of Scotland has now been expanded to include SW Scotland, so the whole of the south of Scotland is now at alert status for water scarcity.

The rest is Scotland which hasn't been mentioned until now is still at early warning status for water scarcity but that is now only really most of the west of Scotland, a small part of the north of Scotland and the Western Isles and Northern Isles.

River levels across most of Scotland are now low to very very low with only a few locations in NW Scotland having anywhere close to normal river levels.

As a new development, ground conditions are now officially classified as dry across most of the east of Scotland with those areas classed as being quite dry now being expanded to cover most of the rest of Scotland with the exception of parts of NW Scotland.

Meanwhile, groundwater and loch levels are low to very low.

As there continues to be no signs of any significant rainfall in the latest model output, the concerns over water scarcity continue to mount and we badly need some rain now in order to alleviate that. Indeed, these concerns have now become so great that this issue was even raised at Holyrood during First Minister's Questions. The details of that are more appropriate for the UIA Forum rather than on here, so I won't go any further into that here but the fact that this issue has now been brought up in the Scottish Parliament in this manner shows just how concerning this situation is now becoming.

Looking at the rainfall anomaly map for April it is clear that it was incredibly dry down the eastern side of the country. Dry in the west too but parts of west Wales. and the south west of England had above average rainfall, and it was pretty average throughout Northern Ireland.

In fact the last day with any measureable rainfall on my weather station was 23rd April. That's 18 days, which is pretty exceptional for North West England.

Rarely do you see the ensembles flat lining for two weeks with such good agreement. If the summer is even just average dry the Water Companies had better be readying to be blamed for the water shortages come August/September.

I would wager it likely the Govt would be forced to nationalise the industry. They have had what twenty, thirty years? to get their houses in order but prefer the dividend heading offshore route to strategic thinking. Water is after all perhaps the most important industry in Britain along with food and then defence arguably.

No other country has privatised their water in the way we have in England - not even the US. It's beyond time for it to be renationalised, and I was hoping both Thames and Southern Water would go bust... would make it a bit easier.

(My water bill has gone up nearly half this year, gee thanks Southern Water!)

Even here in Scotland, our water has never been privatised and has always remained in public hands despite there being no Scottish Parliament before 1999.

A lot of people often say that as a result, the quality of our water here in Scotland is much better than it is in England but even with that, we are still prone to possible shortages of that water if we don't start to get some much needed rainfall very soon and for that, the omens just don't look good because even if some parts of the UK get thunderstorms in the next few days, it is still looking set to remain completely dry here even during that period according to the latest forecasts, so with high pressure then being forecast to build back in after that, there's just no signs whatsoever of any significant rainfall here for the foreseeable future.

But nothing for the western end of Sussex

We had a few spits and spots before midnight but not enough to register. Most of the rain (7.2mm) fell between 1 and 2am, with a max rate of >100mm/hr, which I managed to sleep through. I woke up at about 3am to another heavy shower.

No thunderstorms anywhere near here yesterday, so still looking for some rain for the garden. None in the outlook for over a week.

I think the total for this year so far is about the same 😮