Been watching Haweswater drop over the last couple of months and now Mardale is coming into view with the old stone walls appearing and soon should see an appearance of the old bridge. I’ll be cycling there this weekend to see the progress. Never known it so dry in Cumbria!

https://www.riverlevels.uk/haweswater-reservoir-bampton#.Wz6RGYrTWf0 

Streamflow has been holding up well but the past few days have started to show a bit of a drop with extra stones and shingle becoming exposed compared to the usual midsummer situation.

Walking through all this and being faced from time to time with flurries of dust kicked up by either the breeze or passing vehicles, it no longer feels quite like the English country I’ve come to be familiar with.

The last recorded rainfall at Edinburgh Gogarbank was on 20 June 2018. The last recorded rainfall at the botanic gardens in Edinburgh was on 21 June 2018 with that amounting to just 0.2 mm of rain. This means that we have now gone more than 15 days in a row with no more than 0.2 mm of rain being recorded on any of those days. That in turn means that we have now entered an official absolute drought at both of those stations.

For here in Edinburgh, this is now our second official absolute drought of the year which follows on from the one which ended on 1 June 2018. Meanwhile, the model output continues to show absolutely no signs of any rain in this part of the world during the foreseeable future which means that this could end up being quite a long drought ahead.

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

Click on soil moisture on the left, then anomaly.

Eastern France starting to dry up too, but this was before the deluge of the last 2 days.

I've never had a problem with my tap water, everything grows very well

My feeling is the first half of summer 2018 is going to surpass the first half of summer 1976 for England and Wales in terms of dryness

June 2018 is already drier than June 1976 and latest Hadley figures says about 1mm up to 4th of July which even when combined with June 2018's figure is still less than what was recorded during June 1976.

1976 rain total trackometer starting from July with June's total

1. 18.7

2. 18.7

3. 19.7

4. 20.2

5. 20.3

6. 20.3

7. 20.3

8. 20.5

9. 21.5

10. 21.5

11. 21.6

12. 25.4

13. 28.3

14. 28.8

15. 39.6

Those data tie in very well with my local observations. The grass here is very brown in many places compared with what we would normally see. Even after having water the plants and grass several times things are still very dry.

It’s interesting to see the differing effects on vegetation - while some seems to be thriving in the dry warmth others (like the grass) is really suffering.

There were a few unsettled days here in mid June (14th-21st) but apart from that it had been dry since mid-May. 

I think a few hill side fires might break out in Southern England tomorrow

Latest blog from the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology.

Due to the wet spring in the south, aquifer and reservoir levels are currently in good shape. River levels are starting to get a bit low in some western and northern areas.

https://www.ceh.ac.uk/news-and-media/blogs/uk-hydrological-status-update-early-july-2018

Here in Edinburgh, we are now into day 18 of the latest official absolute drought at both Edinburgh Gogarbank and the botanic gardens in Edinburgh and even here, I can see the effects of this lack of rainfall just about everywhere I go now as the grass has now gone into more of a yellow/brown colour in quite a lot of places.

This is despite the rainfall figures for June coming out as just very slight below average here. However, most of this actually fell in just one single overnight period where over 30 mm of rain was dumped upon us by just one single low pressure system. I doubt that this would be enough to get through in the manner in which it is actually needed and so, we can more or less say that it's been dry since the second half of April here.

EDIT:

The gardens in this part of the world desperately need some rain now to the point where I had to decide whether or not, this need was greater than my own need for England to be beaten in the World Cup, it would be difficult to choose between them just now.

I’ve never known the grass round here to look so brown/dead!

Virtually unheard of in these parts. 

Same here in Higher Blackley only grass that is still green is grass heavily shaded by trees or buildings.

Unusual to see this so early in the season. It happens from time to time in August - I remember late August 2003, when most small trees (and of course all birches) were in full autumn glory.

I've been here since 1991 and I don't ever recall everything being as scorched up as it is at the moment, not even in 1995. The south side of Winter Hill looks very different, quite brown (black in places!) compared to it's normal green. It's like living in Essex!

Even in 76, when we'd done a house move from Manchester to Maidstone at Whitsun but I was doing a weekend commute to finish off the job up north, Manchester remained quite green with average temps when Kent was totally brown and sweltering.

All the cornfields around here look bleached rather than golden.  I have to wonder if the crops are totally ruined.  Other crops are still being irrigated and have been since April, which was also quite dry here. 

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/hosepipe-ban-manchester-when-why-14884841

This in the Manchester Evening News, I did wonder what was happening over the hills where the resovoirs are.

Still too early to say whether we’ll get any meaningful rainfall next week. 

It’s certainly possible. 

Its bone dry here. I am wondering if the roof tops are visible yet in the one which is a flooded village back in 1995 apparently they were visible. They do look pretty low from the pics. I am in Higher Blackely so North Manchester towards Rochdale and Oldham.

One way to guarantee rainfall is to arrange for a TV interview to be done at a dried up reservoir. These are traditionally carried out in the pouring rain :)

I remember in the late 80's drought they show lot of houses appeared when water levels dropped and taking the domestic flight from Heathrow to Leeds I see lot of lakes almost dried up as you can see more shorelines around it.

There's an emerging theme in the model output of heavy, quite slow-moving showers on an increasing number of days.

Friday's been looking more and more capable of producing a fair few of those across E&W, and Monday onward shows some decent potential at least for a couple of days. Always that hit-and-miss characteristic though (organised frontal rain is now looking to be restricted to the NW, if even there).

So the parched look to our lands may take on a more patchwork look by the middle of next week if the models are heading along the right lines. 

it was the same thing up here in 1995 apparently!