A Gardener's Weather Diary

Thursday, 12 December 2019

Topsy Turvy Weather

We've had a mixed bag of weather so far this week but I'm not entirely convinced it's been as bad as the weather forecast suggested. That's up to now at least. It's been windy on and off but nothing out of the ordinary for December, which is often a windy month in any case. The temperature has been below freezing only to turn pretty mild a few hours later.

Temperature & Rainfall Records 06-12 December 2019

Tuesday morning saw the coldest temperature of the month, at -1.3°C (29.7°F), as dawn broke but by lunchtime it had risen to 12.4°C (54.3°F) which is almost the mildest temperature of the month. The forecast for the weekend doesn't look too good with snow showers forecast for most of the day.

Forecast from Netweathertv

It doesn't look very good for allotmenting this weekend with a similar sort of forecast for Sunday too. In the garden some of our spring bulbs are beginning to poke their first shoots through. They'll be okay though even with a covering of snow.

It might be a weekend for having the camera at the ready just in case any snowy weather brings a few more unusual visitors to the garden looking for a tasty treat.

A grey squirrel visited earlier this week to finish off any sunflowers hearts that had been left by the goldfinches. Of course there's plenty of time for the forecast to change and we'll just finish up with a rather wet weekend.

Friday, 6 December 2019

An Evening Visit to RHS Harlow Carr

The weather changed from being rather on the cold side to windy and mild. The forecast for Thursday evening was wet and windy with the rain due to arrive around tea time. The rain didn't arrive but it was windy.

Temperature Records for December 2019

The temperature made it up to 11.9°C the mildest since the opening days of November. We fancied visiting RHS Harlow Carr to see the Glow winter illuminations. The rain was due to arrive just as it got dark and the Glow winter light display began. We couldn't decide whether it would be better to put off visiting to another day when rain wasn't forecast. After lots of deliberations we decided to head to Harrogate and make our decision once there, depending on whether or not the rain had arrived.

As we arrived at Harlow Carr, there was nothing more than the lightest of drizzle in the air so we decided to risk it and have a walk around the display.

Rather oddly the lights looked much better through the camera lens than they did to the naked eye.

Of course, as we followed the trail around the garden we'd no idea whether our photos would come out or not. It might just be that we'd had taken lots of blurry images of trees and lights. As it turned out that wasn't the case and we got some unusual images of the garden in a very different light.

Monday, 2 December 2019

November's Weather Review

If you follow my blog you'll probably be able to guess at November's weather review. Cold and wet sums it up.

Temperature & Rainfall Records for November 2010 - 2019

As you can see this November doesn't actually top either the temperature or rainfall charts but it is the second wettest and only 2010 produced a colder November. We had 29.2mm of rainfall on 07 November 2019 making it the wettest November day I've recorded. It's been a cold miserable month with very little sunshine.

Of course December brings the start of meteorological winter and a review of this autumn's temperature and rainfall records doesn't make any better reading than those of this November.

Autumn Temperature & Rainfall Records 2010 - 2019

Autumn 2019 is the wettest I've recorded by some considerable margin and the temperature is equal coldest with 2012 which makes 2019 the worst autumn I've recorded.

Finally, to finish off the review there's a video of our look around the plot at the end of the month below.

Saturday, 30 November 2019

Who Flipped the Switch?

After a week or so of gloomy days with just about average November temperatures the weather changed through the course of Friday to much colder conditions.

Temperature & Rainfall Records 28-30 November 2019

Saturday morning saw the temperature drop to -3.8°C (25.2°F) the coldest so far this autumn.

The good side of the colder weather is that it's got rid of the gloom and brought us some brighter weather and we made the most of Friday afternoon and had a trip to the plot to harvest some fresh vegetables. It was our usual winter harvest of carrots, parsnips, leeks and cabbage. The swede is a one off as it's a vegetable we have lots of difficulties growing so we consider this one a bit of a success even if we had shared some of it with our allotments pests. The carrots, on the other hand, were the best we've dug this autumn as they were almost free of slug damage.

Tuesday, 26 November 2019

The Gloom Has Descended!

November has been a miserable month even by November standards. It began very wet, giving us our wettest November day of the last 10 years. Throughout the month it was on the cold side until a milder spell arrived over the last couple of days.

November 2019 Temperature & Rainfall Details

For the last few days daytime and night time temperatures have varied very little and the milder few days will probably be enough to stop this from turning out to be the coldest November I've recorded.

However, the milder conditions of the last few days have been accompanied by very cloudy weather without any hint of sunshine. Although it hasn't rained very much the ground has never dried up.

We haven't even visited the allotment to harvest any vegetables but as we've almost run out of fresh vegetables we'll have to make a visit soon. It's certainly too wet to do any other jobs on the plot other than cutting some cabbages and digging up some carrots, parsnips and leeks. The forecast is for the gloom to continue until the weekend when the weather will turn colder again as we head towards December.

Wednesday, 20 November 2019

Coldest November Day Since 2010

After that very cold start I posted about yesterday the temperature never really got very high all day.

Temperature Records for 19 November 2019

The day's average temperature was 0.5°C (32.9°F) making it the lowest November average since 30 November 2010 when the temperature fell to -0.2°C or 31.6°F. It was a cold crisp sort of a day with some hazy wintry sunshine so we decided on a trip to RHS Harlow Carr.

It wasn't a day for taking too long to compose your photograph. This pond still had ice cover in the middle of the afternoon. Certainly most of the trees are now into winter mode having shred their leaves.

The forecast is for the temperatures to gradually recover through the week before it turns wet once again by the weekend.

Tuesday, 19 November 2019

Wet Spell Turns To Cold Spell

The good news is that for a few days at least we've got rid of the cold, dull and damp weather and swapped it for much sunnier and drier days. The downside is that it's turned colder with overnight frosts.

Tuesday morning saw our coldest autumn morning of the year as the temperature fell to -3.2°C or 26.2°F. It was the coldest temperature since the beginning of February this year and the coldest November temperature since 29 November 2016 when the temperature fell to -3.6° or 25.5°F.

Temperature Records 17-19 November 2019

The good news is that we managed a trip to the plot on Monday afternoon to harvest a few vegetables and do a few little jobs as well. I decided to dig over part of our old strawberry bed even though the ground was extremely wet after all the rain. All through last summer this bed was too compacted to dig over and it wasn't possible to get either a fork or a spade in the bone dry ground to dig it over. At least now the ground is much softer making digging possibly.

I'm hoping some winter frosts and more rain will break down the soil by next spring and that the ground will be in good enough condition for planting a crop of potatoes. I'll have to wait until next spring to see if my plan comes to fruition.

Saturday, 16 November 2019

Coldest & Wettest November by Mid-Month

We've now arrived at the middle of November and we have managed only one dry day in the first half of the month. Without doubt the rainfall has been our major stumbling block as far as getting any autumn jobs done on the plot. The ground is too wet to dig and walking over our grass paths quickly converts them from grass paths to mud paths. We did visit last week but only to do a little bit of harvesting as we needed some fresh vegetables.

All the root vegetables need a good wash before bringing them home as they come out of the ground covered with wet soil. The carrots are badly damaged by slugs but the parsnips are free of pest damage even if a few are oddly shaped. As we didn't have a lot to do on the plot I even had time to photograph some of the allotment wildlife.

All the wet weather has rather drawn attention away from the temperatures this month which have been well below average. The result is that as we have arrived at the mid point of the month this is the coldest and wettest November I've recorded at this stage.

Mid-November Temperature & Rainfall Data 2010-2019

I'm hoping that the second half of the month will see some sort of improvement. Obviously, we're not going to get any warm days as we approach the start of meteorological winter, but some dry sunny days would be much appreciated.