Tuesday, 31 December 2019

December's An Odd Month

The weather hasn't been too bad between Christmas and the new year. At least it has been dry, allowing us to get down to the allotment to do a bit of tidying up and harvest a few fresh vegetables.
As the summer temperatures begin to fall in August we start to see a pattern develop where the beginning of the month is warmer than the end of the month. February marks the end of this spell as the winter begins to end and the temperatures begin to rise as we head towards spring. However, rather oddly, December somehow manages to have a recent trend of being milder at the end of the month and cooler at the beginning exactly the opposite of what you would expect.
 December Temperatures 2019
Surprising both daytime high (solid red line) and night time low temperatures (solid blue line) show a slight upward trend through December. 
January Temperatures 2019
By the time January comes around it's back to expected with the end of the month having colder temperatures than the beginning of the month. February then marks the start of a gradual rise in temperatures as we move towards spring and summer. 

We made a short video of our visits to the plot after Christmas.


Posted by Martyn at 09:10 0 comments

Tuesday, 24 December 2019

Merry Christmas

I've just checked back through my last 10 years of temperature records for Christmas Day. The forecast for this year is 7°C (44.6°F)rather mild for Christmas or is it? The coldest Christmas Day was in 2009 with a temperature of 2.5°C (36.5°F) and the mildest was in 2016 with a rather tropical 14.2°C or 57.6°F. 
Christmas Eve December 2009
I think 2010 was probably the last white Christmas Day that we had.

It's worth noting that Christmas Day in 2010 had a low temperature of -4.8°C (23.4°F) compared to only -0.4°C (31.3°F) in 2009. December 2010 was the beginning of the coldest winter in around 100 years so little surprise in the cold temperatures over Christmas.
 Christmas Day 2010
Whatever the weather is like where you are, have a great Christmas.

Posted by Martyn at 10:38 2 comments

Monday, 23 December 2019

Some Different Weather Please!

Well, winter has officially started and the good news is that the hours of daylight are beginning to lengthen. Unfortunately, all that means at the moment is we will be able to see it raining for longer. It seems rather hard to believe now, but when I filmed our mid September bird's eye view of the plot, we had the hosepipe out watering parts of the plot. I'd left digging over beds that had been cleared of summer crops because the ground was too dry.
The rain began on the 22nd September, and I didn't realise then that that day marked a significant change in the pattern of our weather. It marked a change from weather dominated by high pressure bringing us fine dry weather to low pressure bringing us wet weather in from the Atlantic Ocean. We've remained under the influence of low pressure systems resulting in what seems to be nothing but wet weather ever since.
Temperature & Rainfall Records 2019
The first three weeks of September were dry but we had enough rainfall in the later stages of the month for it to become the wettest month of the year. It didn't hold on to that tag for long as October took over the record. November turned out to be another wet month but it didn't quite manage to overtake October's rainfall total. December hasn't turned out to be as wet as the previous months, so far, but it's managed to rain most days preventing any drying out of the ground.
Harvesting Parsnips
Apart from harvesting fresh vegetables as required we've done no tidying up work on the plot since the rain started back in September. A little bit of pruning has been done but all the beds have been left to dry out before any winter digging is done. I think it might be a case of waiting until spring arrives before any drying out takes place. Until we get a change in the weather pattern to more settled weather nothing very much is going to get done on the allotment.

Posted by Martyn at 11:08 2 comments

Monday, 16 December 2019

No Signs Of It Drying Up

It's not been that good a week weather wise, even allowing for the fact it is December. The temperature has been reasonably mild, at times, but then has quickly reverted to more average values for mid December. We've not had any great amount of rain on any one day, but it's rained most days.
Temperature & Rainfall Records 16 November - 16 December 2019
The forecast was for snow showers through last Saturday and into Sunday morning, but they didn't materialise and fell as rain,   although there seems to have been plenty of snow about in higher areas of Yorkshire. The rainfall for most of the last month has been in the form of showers and, falling on previously saturated ground after three months of above average rainfall, the ground is well and truly waterlogged. The showers over the last month have added up to 47.2mm which is about average for a month's rainfall.  
It's not been the sort of weather to encourage us to visit the allotment to make a start on any of the winter jobs we had planned. The ground never gets any chance to start to dry out. We are running a little bit low on fresh vegetables so a visit to the plot between showers is probably due. The wet weather started in September and is continuing into December. Other than harvesting a few vegetables we haven't done very much at all at the allotment since the beginning of September. If it ever does dry out spring is going to be very busy in the garden and at the allotment but in the meantime I'd better start looking through the seed catalogues.

Posted by Martyn at 10:29 0 comments

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.

Posted by Martyn at 10:43 2 comments

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. 

Posted by Martyn at 10:27 2 comments

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.


Posted by Martyn at 10:03 4 comments
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