Thursday wasn’t too bad a day following yesterday’s storms. Ossett seemed particularly badly hit by the storms which left some local roads flooded. By Thursday morning things were generally drying up well. A visit to the plot confirmed just how heavy yesterday’s rain had been and the ground dug a couple of days ago had obviously had standing water on it. The surface will need breaking up before it gets chance to form a concrete like crust.
It was a day when rain threatened most of the time. Occasionally the sun shone and it was warm, but a strong breeze kept the clouds moving quickly and showers were always a threat. The sky was a mix from blue to very dark thundery clouds.
It was amazing where all that rain went as doing some digging the ground was moist on top but below a few inches still reasonably dry. This area where our crop of early broad beans had been cleared dug well.
Hard to believe it had 34mm of rain yesterday between 17:30 and 23:00 that’s around 75% of July’s average rainfall. Yesterday’s rain has ensured that here in Ossett we have already exceeded the expected rainfall total for July.
Wednesday - Torrential rain!
Well Wednesday really made up for the lack of rain with two thunderstorms giving torrential rain. The first storm broke around 17:30 and lasted about an hour, giving around 15mm of rain. At one point in the storm the rainfall was fast enough to give us all July's rainfall in just 20 minutes.
The second storm began around 21:30 and deposited another 15mm or so in the next hour. The rainfall for the day was 33.4mm the most since I began keeping records last October. I've noticed that none of the Met Office stations recorded anything like this amount of rainfall. I'm hoping the plot a few miles away got its fair share.
Tuesday - Just like buses!
We had some more rain Tuesday. Having waited for a wet day two come along together. I did a bit of digging on the plot yesterday to prepare a bed ready for winter brassicas. The rain from Monday did no more than wet the surface of the soil. It was bone dry underneath as you can see from photo below.
Looking round our plot I thought the dahlias had a lot of growing to do to become the large bushes they usually are by August. I think the dry weather has certainly reduced their growth this year. The photo below shows our dahlia bed in the middle of July this year and last.
Monday - Wow Rain!
Monday turned out to be the wettest day for a month. Not that we had much rain but at the moment any rain is good rain. It was just light rain or drizzle for several hours. The hot spell of the last week or so has come to an end with yesterdays high temperature in the mid teens rather than mid twenties.
As it was wet I decided to take some bird photos but by the time I had my camera and tripod set up the birds had disappeared. I did manage to snap this chaffinch that hadn't heard about me and my camera.
Monthly Temperature Comparisons
The charts below to compare our monthly temperatures this year with those of last year and the coldest and warmest temperatures for each month. The figures are mean temperatures for each day.
Table produced using data from the
Met Office Hadley Centre. The data covers the period 1772 to 2009
Greenhouse v Outside Temperatures
I've also added the following spreadsheet tracking my greenhouse v outside temperatures for February and March
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