Starting to look quite parched here now. Ground is rock hard . Although the charts next week look unsettled rain totals are low in the east at least.

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Starting to look quite parched here now. Ground is rock hard . Although the charts next week look unsettled rain totals are low in the east at least.

Very parched, and it wouldn't surprise me if those unsettled charts were downgraded before too long (that is already happening to a certain extent, going by one of Brian's latest posts in the MO thread).

The dry summer which we had last year wasn't a real issue for us because that followed on from what was the second of two back to back wet winters. However, every single season since then has been drier than average here with last October and February 2022 being our only wetter than average months since then.

Indeed, every single month during this year with the exception of February has been substantially drier than average here and this month is once again, on course to end up being yet another substantially drier than average.

Indeed, that is even pushing me to to the point now where I am getting sick and tired of writing that in every single monthly precipitation thread or monthly/seasonal statistics thread on this forum which I am posting because of the fact I am just posting the same old stuff in there every single month or season as a result, and that gets a bit boring after a while.

I am noticing that around me as well because the ground is very hard-baked with the sunshine and the grass is starting to look rather yellow/brown here.

Furthermore, SEPA are already advising us to be very careful about the amount of water which we are consuming because of this lack of rainfall, and I am convinced that water shortages and/or hosepipe bans are on the way to this part of the world before too long.

A number  of people on this forum have suggested in other threads that this deficit will be made up over time as we go into the second half of this year, but I would need to see that actually happening before I could actually believe that.

 

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Starting to look quite parched here now. Ground is rock hard . Although the charts next week look unsettled rain totals are low in the east at least.

Not at all parched. Garden is very green and on my dog walks, I am having to navigate wet and muddy patches on the paths and fields.

It's very damp out there, and some parts of my regular dog walk remain impassable without wellies.

It really must be a different climate here in Witney to anywhere else.

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Yeah, my beloved lawn is starting to look thirsty in places, even though I have done reasonably well in terms of rainfall so far this Summer. The persistent run of brisk north east winds and salt laden air probably doesn't help much anyway. I don't use a hose out of fears of running up my water bill, but the water metering system is also what prevents water restrictions from taking hold too soon.

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Even here in Cumbria its been a dry month just 22.4mm or 30% or normal so far. Plants need watering everyday, grass OK at the moment but I look after a cricket ground and its desperate for some rainfall, cracks appearing in the square despite watering. A good 20-30mm rain over two days would be very helpful

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Last year was dry and winter here didn't really get wet at any point though of course ground water was boosted to some extent.
This year only February has been near normal every other month has been dry or very dry.
Annual total so far is 170mm which is about half normal for this date.
Summer months after May can be among the wettest in some years so could soon catch up.
Fields are dry and stressed but not brown as yet as here we have have very little heat with plenty of North Sea influence

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Watering the plants daily but things aren't really parched yet, just a bit dry.
30mm rain this month and could rise over the next week.
324mm for the year which is slightly below average, only February was wet , all other months dryer than average.

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Last year was dry and winter here didn't really get wet at any point though of course ground water was boosted to some extent.
This year only February has been near normal every other month has been dry or very dry.
Annual total so far is 170mm which is about half normal for this date.
Summer months after May can be among the wettest in some years so could soon catch up.
Fields are dry and stressed but not brown as yet as here we have have very little heat with plenty of North Sea influence

As I said above, I will need to actually see that happening this year before I will actually believe that.

Last summer was drier than average overall, but I can remember that July 2021 was actually wetter than average overall in terms of the actual rainfall amounts. However, that was only because there was a massive thunderstorm at the beginning of that month which produced so much rainfall from it, that this was actually enough to skewer the overall total for that entire month quite significantly.

Apart from that one blip, July 2021 was actually a very warm (and at times, hot) and sunny month which in terms of the number of official rain days, was actually quite a lot drier than average overall.

I agree that summer months can be the wettest months in some years, but the contribution towards those totals due to relatively short-term thunderstorms can't be ignored.

From this, we can see that there are actually two ways of determining whether or not a month or season is wetter than average because this can be in terms of the actual rainfall amounts, in terms of the number of official rain days or both.

As a result, I have to raise the question of how many of those wet summer months in the past have been wet due to actual regular rainfall, and not just because of the odd thunderstorm which has occurred in what has actually been an otherwise very dry month overall.

When you get a month like that, it doesn't take long for everything to dry up again with the heat of the Sun with a lot of that rainfall also having been lost due to any resulting flash flooding which might have happened.

These types of rainfall events are therefore not all that useful in terms of keeping our water levels at a reasonable level and so what we really need for that, is at least one month (preferably a run of months) which is wetter than average in terms of the number of rain days due to rain falling on a regular basis with the resulting amounts being fairly significant as well (that is, not just amounting to a fraction of a millimeter, or not much more than that every time).

The issue which we have though, is that this is summer and the majority of Brits are usually looking for a decent summer with one of the conditions for that being that it should be drier than average overall. Sadly, these people are also unlikely to be able to fully understand the consequences of what could happen if rainfall remains in very short supply for too long a period of time because they are only interested at the end of the day, in getting some decent weather which will allow them to enjoy their summer holidays.

 

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Not very much.

Me and my youngest went on a big dog walk at the start of the month through the woodland near us. Lovely day - warm, sunny - but the route was damp and muddy in many places. It does get prone to becoming waterlogged, but this was bad. The [mostly white] dog came home black.

It will have dried out a fair bit since (on a couple of accasions, the forecast rain either hasn't materialised at all, or has been brief and light), but not to the baked-hard-as-concrete it can get.

The strip of lawn between our drive and the tossers next door's is just beginning to show a little yellowing, but this is always susceptible and the first area to go brown at the fringes (it does most years)

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Lawn is more yellow than green now but I’m not bothering watering it as we’ll be digging it up this year.  Rain has missed us spectacularly in the past few weeks, with downpours only a couple of miles away on several occasions, while we’ve stayed dry.

Met office have just issued a thunder warning for tomorrow but whether or not it produces rain, we’ll wait and see!  

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Until the recent hotter weather, I was impressed how well the green areas were holding up despite considerable rainfall shortages since last November. The table below shows the anomalies since August 2021 (June scaled 1st-21st), within which October sticks out like a sore thumb but, fascinatingly, was then fully countered by the driest November on record.

Month	Rain % 1991-2020 LTA
Aug '21	49.9%
Sep '21	23.2%
Oct '21	141.7%
Nov '21	5.2%
Dec '21	67.9%
Jan '22	27.4%
Feb '22	79.8%
Mar '22	106.0%
Apr '22	24.4%
May '22	81.4%
Jun '22	34.7%

The mean anomaly across all those months is 58.3% so nearly half the usual rainfall has been absent.

Across Nov-Jun the deficit is even larger (53.3% anomaly). 

Despite this, it has taken some high temperatures followed by sunny, very warm days with low relatively humidity to trigger a mass fading of lawns toward straw shades.

The coming days look to bring a chance of showers on each, most of all tomorrow afternoon when locally large rainfall totals look possible. Alas, as John has correctly noted, short, sharp spells of rain do relatively little good when hitting hard-baked terrain. A lot of the water either runs off or evaporates before much has soaked in.

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Yellow Warning for Thunderstorms Thursday fr several parts for Southern Parts.  

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London is just starting to parch. May be greening up again for a time after this weekend and early next week.

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Ground is very dry here and I'm needing to water the plants regularly. Grass is still nice and green but there are some areas where the colour is being lost. Very little rain forecast at the moment.

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Ground has been quite dry and firm now for several months but we've had regular top-ups of rain which have been preventing it getting to 'parched' status.  These have also kept my tiny lawn looking reasonably green. However, the recent rain has been lighter and so it appears to be drier now than any time so far this year. 

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Not at all parched. Garden is very green and on my dog walks, I am having to navigate wet and muddy patches on the paths and fields.

It's very damp out there, and some parts of my regular dog walk remain impassable without wellies.

It really must be a different climate here in Witney to anywhere else.

I'd expect nothing less in Moominland. 😁

Looks like quite a variety of Parchedness across the country.  

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Still looking rather green round these parts for the time of year. We haven't really had any shortage of rain the past couple of months.

The grass is looking parched where the sun reaches it all day. Another of those weather warnings for tomorrow. 

I'd take a punt that it wont amount to much if indeed anything based on the previous (let's say hyperbolic) ones. The 'fast moving lightning' one a classic. But I'd like the forecast to come true if only to freshen up and reduce the daily watering of containers. The pots  look tropical with cannas and so on flourishing. The Olive in a pot is flowering and makes the sitting area outside the office look Mediterranean. The beautiful blue agapanthus are just coming into flower too.

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Not at all parched. Garden is very green and on my dog walks, I am having to navigate wet and muddy patches on the paths and fields.

It's very damp out there, and some parts of my regular dog walk remain impassable without wellies.

It really must be a different climate here in Witney to anywhere else.

It really must be. My lawn is just about completely strawlike now despite some rain in the last couple of weeks. Ground is rock hard and dusty.

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Very dry here. I've been digging out a fushia bush the last few days and the soil was like trying to dig through rock or gravel. Then the backfill was like the Dust Bowl.

In true UK fashion though, it won't surprise me if we're talking about flooding come the end of August,

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