Yesterday, I posted on the fact that a lot was riding on what happened last night in terms of whether or not, we would have more than 50 mm of rain during this month at Edinburgh Gogarbank. I have to say though that weather gods have failed really miserably on this front. To imagine what trying to get at least 50 mm of rain at that site this month, I only need to think of a situation where my football team (which could be any team in this case, and not necessarily the team that I actually support in real life) is playing against a team which they haven't managed to beat for at least 20-odd attempts. It is often said that the longer that you go without beating such opposition, the harder that it can actually be to do so due to the various psychological barriers and mental blocks which increasingly get in the way of that.
On this occasion though, I can imagine that the scenario here is that my team are in a situation where they will never have a better chance to end that long run without a win than on this occasion. Here, the other team play very poorly and my team manage to be a couple of goals up against them with just a few minutes to go. In this situation, it seems that there is no way on Earth that this long run without a win couldn't be ended . Yet my team's defence completely mess everything up in those last few minutes and the end result of this is that my team concede a couple of goals in those couple of minutes. The result of this is that the game ends up as a draw with the main media headlines pointing out the fact that my team just cannot beat that other team with what happened on this occasion being the ultimate, conclusive evidence of that.
That sounds like a really amazing scenario and yet, that is what the process of trying to get 50 mm of rain during this month at Edinburgh Gogarbank has become like. Going into last night, we only needed another 0.4 mm of rain in order to reach that 50 mm mark. Everything then started to set itself up so that it would then appear as though we could not possibly fail to get that amount of rain. There was a lot of rain to the west and south of us which appeared to be heading in this direction as was shown when I was watching Scotland's women's football team on BBC Alba (they were playing in World Cup Qualifying match) and noticed that some really heavy rain had set in there.
According to the rain radar map, there was some heavy rain just about 5 miles to the south of here, and we were even under some light rain at times, although this was never at any time, enough to even wet the ground. In that situation, I was left wondering what on Earth could possibly go wrong and yet, that rain just didn't get any further north than that and actually cleared away southwards again as we got to midnight. As I said before, we only needed another 0.4 mm of rain to get over that 50 mm mark for this month and if that that rain band had just come about 5 miles or so further north, I'm in no doubt that this would have happened without any problems.
Yet, that rain band just wouldn't push itself any further north and the end result of this was that no rain at all was recorded at Edinburgh Gogarbank or the botanic gardens in Edinburgh. That in turn, has to be the most conclusive proof of all, that we just cannot get over that 50 mm mark at Edinburgh Gogarbank during this month as that monthly total remains resolutely and firmly stuck on 49.6 mm, and given the latest forecasts for the rest of this month, I am really struggling to see where that other 0.4 mm of rain is actually going to come from, even though there are still six days left of this month. We might get a bit of a northerly wind towards the end of the month which would actually be great for me as I would much rather be getting some colder weather than just doing nothing more than posting high rainfall totals on this thread, but that sort of wind direction just isn't very good for delivering any showery activity to this part of the world due to us being sheltered from the hills over on the Fife side, and that just makes it even less likely that we will get any further rainfall.
It is therefore, really extraordinary how this has happened, especially when you consider that even 50 mm of rain over an entire month still isn't very much when you consider that the 1981-2010 October average for Edinburgh Gogarbank is actually 84.5 mm. 50 mm of rain during this month is therefore not too much to ask for and so, the fact that we can't even get that shows that we can safely say now that this is going to go down as a very dry month indeed in this part of the world. Yet, members such as Bolty will continue to come onto this thread to report their very high rainfall totals as they are perfectly entitled to do if that is what is actually happening in their part of the world. I know that Bolty lives in what on average, is a wetter location than where I live but even with that, the sheer differences in the amount of rainfall at these two locations just now is nothing more than absolutely ridiculous at the moment.
it is often said that Mother Nature will balance everything out in the end. Yet, that clearly doesn't seem to be happening just now and if anything, the discrepancies in the rainfall totals between the driest and wettest parts of the UK just seem to be getting even bigger at the moment and that to me, just doesn't seem fair.
The north of Edinburgh, usually always missing out on snow events which occur not just within the rest of Scotland or the UK, but also within the rest of Edinburgh.