Today rain would ensure every area have rain and those that missed the storms on Friday would see their dry days tally back to 0.  Now is tall order to get back to over 50 days as it will be early Autumn by then and might not see this for a long time.  It easy to get long dry days in Spring but summer hard to get it because either you get a heatwave that often bring rain/storms while in Spring less risk and often HP stable days only.

Thanks to this mornings rain (still falling) and the couple of mm's that fell the other night we are now approaching 25mm of rain - our July average is just over 30mm. So this month certainly won't be going down as a dry one.

Curious as to what constitutes as a drought..

Here we have 20 days where rain falls in the summer months (june-august) on average..

That leaves 72 days where rain doesn't fall!!

115mm is the combined monthly totals average..

Mediterranean regions generally have below 30mm in the driest summer month. So the Portsmouth average (if it’s right) makes the area sub-Mediterranean, or at least would fobif it were warm enough. That’s about right actually - most of the South coast East if Dorset has 30-45mm in July on average. But temperature is important too. 30mm with maxes of low 20s isn’t the same as 30mm with maxes of low 30s.

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Mediterranean regions generally have below 30mm in the driest summer month. So the Portsmouth average (if it’s right) makes the area sub-Mediterranean, or at least would fobif it were warm enough. That’s about right actually - most of the South coast East if Dorset has 30-45mm in July on average. But temperature is important too. 30mm with maxes of low 20s isn’t the same as 30mm with maxes of low 30s.

32mm for July but May is even dryer with an average of 28mm - these figures are from the met office for southsea which is part of Portsmouth.

Well we appear destined to rejoin the heat and , this time of year, Europe can be getting very hot so temps could start rising even higher?

I do hope this is not the flip side of the 'washout summer' years?

Another 6 summers of this will be rough for the countryside?

(Esp. if winters are equally blessed by H.P.?)

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Only about 30 miles northwest of Portsmouth, my July long-term average is 49 mm so quite a difference over such a small distance. It's a reflection of the fact that our climatological westerlies tend to diverge at low levels along south-facing coasts, due to land friction causing a slight leftward shift of the air flow compared to that over the sea.

 

Now - here's a report of mine on the impact of the weekend's wet and windy weather on my locality:

The landscape is a strange collage of mainly dry artificial surfaces, slightly damp but still mostly brown grass, mainly withered or shrivelled vegetation, drifted leaf litter and a lot of fallen twigs along with a few downed branches.

Coupled with an air temp only just short of 20*C, it's as if we've time-jumped to a late October breakdown of an exceptionally dry first two months of autumn.

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Updated rainfall totals.
May 2018 14mm
June 2018 3mm
July 2018 4mm (in the last 2 days).
Recent rain welcome but strong wind last 2 days has dried everywhere out already.

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Is there anywhere that avoided rain over the weekend that is still in drought?

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Is there anywhere that avoided rain over the weekend that is still in drought?

No, so the record will have to wait for another year or maybe 40!

 

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My WS is out of action so I don’t know how much rain we actually had, but it has been moderate to steady all weekend, exactly what was needed for it to soak in and quench the earth.  My lawn is showing signs of recovery but the grass verges are still the colour of the corn stubble fields. The trees in the forest don’t look too stressed but those along roadsides have littered the ground with yellow leaves and some small branches brought down by gusty winds.

OK, we’ve had enough rain for now, bring back the heat!  

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Amazing how quickly the lawn has recovered since Friday's rain. We've now had more rain in the last few days than the past few months combined and the grass is getting greener by the hour

The weather has flipped and looks like staying wet and warm for the rest of summer

 

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Still waiting for more than a very patchy greening-up of the lawns and public grass areas here, despite it raining for so many hours on Sunday and with a few showers since (only light, mind).

Much to the disdain of many locals, it's the weeds and mosses that appear to  have stolen the lion's share of the water, with very rapid growth on their part at the expense of most of the grass plants! 

 

This is probably due to a combination of quite porous soils in these parts (water quickly percolating down to where the thirsty trees dominate the drinking scene) and having missed out on the heaviest of the recent rain events (sometimes by mere miles!); the total was not enough to satisfy the weeds and mosses and leave enough over for the grass to perform much of a recovery.

A fair few stretches of (mostly south-facing) grasses appear, however, to have simply died, as they're strewn with dirty brown-coloured patches (sometimes exposed dirt, other times the grass itself has blackened) and show no sign of recovery whatsoever. This area did, after all, experience one of the longest observed runs in the UK of days that the Met Office classify as dry (under 1 mm total rainfall).

 

It all serves as a reminder that we're not out of the woods yet in terms of longer-term drought development; for that we'll need a wetter than average run lasting several months. Ideally starting in October, when evapotranspiration rates are much lower.

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http://www.itv.com/news/westcountry/2018-07-31/isles-of-scilly-could-run-out-of-water-after-lack-of-rain/ 

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I was wondering what the situation might be in the Scilly Isles. I do know that on tropical islands salt water ingress is sometimes a serious issue with greater freshwater use.

I have had quick look and found this document closer to home you might well know about.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/593955/IOS_SPZ_delineation_v2_-_2.pdf

Something I was unaware of was this.

'Prior to 2010, the Isles of Scilly were exempt from UK environmental legislation. This situation was ended in 2010, with the introduction of the Environmental Permitting Regulations (EPR). Due to the extension of EPR to the islands, the Environment Agency has produced SPZs there.'

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Hi Nick, that was a very interesting read and not something I'd seen before so Thank you for posting. The situation down here is one to keep an eye on - the islands economy is around 90% tourism one way or another so a loss of water supply, even temporary or restricted, would be catastrophic.
Interestingly the islands have become more reliant in recent decades on the aquifers, previously most homes, especially on the off islands supplemented with rain water harvested from roofs. My brothers home had this until 2 years ago - it meant the extra stomach bug or two as it wasn't filtered but the water tasted wonderful. Looking back I can't help wondering if the seagul poo added a certain something!!

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I was wondering what the situation might be in the Scilly Isles. I do know that on tropical islands salt water ingress is sometimes a serious issue with greater freshwater use.

I have had quick look and found this document closer to home you might well know about.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/593955/IOS_SPZ_delineation_v2_-_2.pdf

Nick

I looked at this link and was quite surprised to see how much Scilly depended on ground water. AFAIK Scilly is mainly granite so although the granite will be fractured (think Dartmoor tors) there isn't going to be the big 'sponge' which is chalk aquifer of southern England. So - limited capacity, and more rapid ingress of salt water along well-defined channels in the granite?

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That's almost what I am thinking. The islands are not like say Palawan Island in the South China Sea/ Sulu Sea with a significant portion of potable water in the main urban area extracted from fossilised coral aquifers and the danger of salt water/septic/cess tank ingress, a situation with which I am familiar to a degree. But granite that is not well endowed in water retention, so I was surprised to hear about it thinking the Scilly potable supply must be roof harvested rainwater combined with the de-sal plant.

As to bacterial issues I would have thought that rain water harvested from roofs which is a potable solution in many parts of the world could be treated with a UV system like this, though I am sure it's teaching grandma to suck eggs. 

https://www.rainwaterharvesting.co.uk/filtration/ultra-violet-filter-112

Now you have fired me up I found this.

https://www.thisisscillynews.com/single-post/2018/07/30/Water-usage-on-St-Marys-unsustainable

All in all a serious situation for the islands.

Nick

 

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Many homes do have rain water filtration systems now for the roofs however they are relatively expensive and so I think that older residents who were used to the system just did without. Also with the advent of mains electricity in the mid 1980s on the off islands more people became reliant on boreholes. I'm not sure how much is harvested from rain water these days - much less on St. Marys the main island than the off islands I imagine.

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After being over in the Channel isles for a couple of weeks...returned home today to be greeted by renewed green growth...lawns needed cutting for the first time in weeks...local arable farmland looks considerably greener plus hedge rows now looking like something akin to normal summer status. My neighbour reported 2 considerable downpours over the weekend ...it's amazing how quickly nature responds....
Over in Guernsey things looked very scorched and parched...the only green vegetation was the gorse growing along the cliffs on the South of the island...My Mum's lawn looked barely existent apart from a few weeds breaking the monotony of brown....

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