Just great

After the wind and rain on Monday, Tuesday turned out to be a lovely day. More heavy overnight rain cleared away to give a pleasant, mild and sunny day.

From 03 Weather 2010

A Meeches Prolific quince ripens in the autumn sunshine on the plot.

Lots of everything!

What a day, gales, sun and plenty of rain. During the day there was a reasonable amount of sunshine but this was accompanied by gale force winds which gradually eased in the middle of the afternoon. The runner beans on the plot took a real battering from the wind.

From 03 Weather 2010

I planted out my Dobies brassica collection. The ground was really dry so I took extra care to fill the planting holes with water and then water the plants in well. Covering with netting to protect from birds and insects was great fun in the wind. The completed job is shown below.

From 03 Weather 2010

Then of course in the evening it begins to rain and continues through most of the night and by morning we had received 34mm of rain, over half September’s expected rainfall.

Cloudy

Sunday saw a break in the fine weather of the last few days with much less sunshine than of late. It remained mild and dry though. The last few warm and sunny days has started my greenhouse tomatoes ripening quickly. The green tomato chutney is on hold for a while.

From 03 Weather 2010

Nature’s solar panel

The fine weather continued on Saturday although the sunshine was far more hazy than the last few days.

Whilst we were at Fairburn Ings on Friday we noticed that numerous black swans had one leg over their back, swimming with just one leg. Turns out they use their foot a bit like a solar panel to warm up their body temperature, the really clever bit is they can reverse the process and cool down rather than warm up. Brilliant! Click here for more details.

From 03 Weather 2010

More of the same please

We decided to visit Fairburn Ings RSPB reserve for a walk on Friday as the glorious start to September continued. Harvesting was put on hold as the forecast for the week-end is not too bad.

From 03 Weather 2010

Some parts of the reserve looked very lush, almost sub-tropical, in the warm afternoon sunshine.

From 03 Weather 2010

RSPB Fairburn Ings is located close by the A1 near Castleford in West Yorkshire.


View RSPB Fairburn Ings in a larger map

Excellent start continues

Thursday continued our excellent start to September with another sunny and warm day. We picked our first pepper of the season from the greenhouse, a variety called Jimmy Nardellos's.

From 03 Weather 2010

I’ve made a plot of evaporation from the ground against rainfall for August. Whilst I admit I do not consider this to be an exact science given all the variables involved it does show why the plot is very dry even though we thought August was a poor month. The balance at the moment between rainfall and evaporation is around 20mm of rainfall required to bring back a zero value.

From 03 Weather 2010

September starts well

Wednesday is the beginning of autumn in meteorological speak. The first day of autumn was superb with sunshine most of the day, almost no breeze and after another chilly start to the day a mid afternoon temperature of 23.4°C.

From 03 Weather 2010

August ends on a high

August ending with a superb day after a very cold start we had almost un-broken sunshine. Some parts of Yorkshire had their coldest August night since the mid 1980’s. On the plot the sunflowers added to the late summer feel of the day.

From 03 Weather 2010