Amazingly April’s average temperature has finished up as average or slightly above average. Average isn't the first word that springs to mind to describe this April. It seems rather amazing that the temperature finished up "average for the month" as most days seemed pretty cold apart from our ridiculously hot spell of a few days around the middle of the month. However, a combination of those few hot days and the fact that night time temperature held up quite well resulted in April’s temperature finishing up around average.
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| Temperature Records for April 2018 |
It does go to show that for gardener’s monthly average temperatures aren’t that much use as they don't give enough detail of how that average value was made up. Looking in detail at April’s weather, the chart above shows that the first half of the month was pretty cool by day with hardly any day time temperatures reaching the red line which indicates the average from the last eight years. The end of April also turned out on the cool side with daytime temperatures below average. However, those unusually high temperatures around the middle of the month offset three weeks of below average ones but five good days didn't exactly make our gardening problems disappear.
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| Temperature & Rainfall Comparisons for April 2010 - 2018 |
We also had one very wet day early in April when we had about a month’s rainfall. With a number of wet days since then, producing another month's worth of rainfall, it’s been a struggle to get the plot to dry out enough to dig over the ground which has remained wet and soggy. To make matters worse this followed on from a colder and wetter than average March. Even BBC Radio Leeds paid us a visit when they did an item covering how the poor weather was delaying sowing and planting for gardeners and farmers in Yorkshire.
At the end of April we’re two or three weeks behind schedule at the allotment. We’re now waiting for beds to dry out so that they can be dug over. To say that April’s temperature was average doesn’t give any clues as to the problems gardeners have had during the month.
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| Cherry - Stella |
Currently the forecast for the first few weeks of May looks pretty promising, so once we get a wet Wednesday morning out of the way, some of the sowing, planting and digging delayed in March and April might get underway over the next few weeks.
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An average is after all just another statistic - following up lies and damn lies!
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing Martyn and thank you for the time in recording and making this post blessings to you both as always
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