Gale force winds and showers

Wednesday was windy with gale force winds and showers. In our rather sheltered garden it’s only the second time I've recorded a wind gust speed in excess of 30 mph with a gust of 33mph at 11:00. The only other occasion was the 4th February this year when a gust reached 36mph at 20:00. 

Plenty of showers amounted to 8.0mm of rain in the day making it our wettest day since 26th August and keeping us on target for our average December rainfall. 

Cold, windy and more showers

Tuesday continued the windy spell of weather we are having. All the frequent showers are starting to build up our rainfall amount this month. Although it’s early days December’s rainfall is on target to be around average for the month. 

With heavy rainfall forecast for Thursday this week we might be beginning to see an end to our long spell of below average rainfall. 

Just a tiny amount of sleet today

Blink and you would have missed it but today we did have just a little bit of sleet or hail before all the showers turned to rain. It was cold all day with the temperature reaching just 4.9°C our coldest daytime value since 21st February this year. Despite the low temperatures we still didn't have any frost. 

Sue asked me last week if I used sugar to make bread. I do as I thought sugar was needed to feed the yeast in order to make the bread rise. It seemed that this might be me believing in an old wives tale so as it was cold and miserable I thought it was a good day to test out a sugarless bread.

The result turned out fine. No problems with the dough rising at all. A bit like gardening this bread making  - never too old to learn something new.

Cold

Sunday was our coldest day since the 8th March with an average daily temperature of just 4.4°C. The temperature didn't fall below freezing with a minimum of 1.9°C. 

Once again it was a day with plenty of showers. Thankfully all these fell as rain rather than sleet or snow. I reckon that winter has arrived now taking over from our mild autumn.

Wet without rain

Saturday was dull and cloudy with plenty of showers spread throughout the day. It didn't dry up between showers giving the impression that it had rained for most of the day. In total the showers added up to 2.4mm of rain. As the day progressed the temperature got colder. 

On the allotment some parts of the plot seem reasonable wet now despite the fact we haven’t had any great amount of rain. Although, on our visit to the plot on Friday, I did dig up this sprout plant (Crispus) for some fresh vegetables for the weekend and it was easy enough to knock all the soil away from the root of the plant. 

Our rather clayey soil soon sticks to the roots of plants once it gets too wet but that’s not the case at the moment as the relatively dry soil fell away from the sprout roots.

A visit to the plot

There was a cold chill in the air on Friday morning with the temperature just managing around 6°C by mid afternoon. It became windier and milder in the evening and our top temperature of the day 9.3°C arrived at midnight.

It felt chilly on the plot in the afternoon. Perhaps the mild temperatures so far have made us a little soft. The plot certainly had a bleak winter look to it.

Amazingly amidst the gloom one of our roses (Elmshorn) still has some flowers and buds. A few flowers still out on the plot brightened up the dull day just a little.

Winter begins

In meteorological speak the 1st of December marks the start of winter. It’s started in much the same way as autumn went out, mild and pretty breezy at times.

There’s lots of comments in the press and on TV anticipating a drought in certain areas if the winter turns out to be dry following on from a dry spring, summer and autumn.

Whilst I'm not entirely sure that we fit in with the areas suggested in the Sky News article we do fit in with the low rainfall. At the end of November we have only had 58% of our expected rainfall over the last 12 months. I guess that unless we get some really wet months in a row to get back to 100% is going to take quite a while.

So far in 2011 February has been the only month to exceed the expected monthly rainfall. Mind you it was wet and we had double the expected rainfall. April was our driest month with just 2.4mm of rainfall.

Rhubarb’s up

Wednesday’s weather was typical of the month, some sunny spells, dry but mostly cloudy. It was another mild day but it felt chilly in the strong breeze.

My new rhubarb Stockbridge Arrow planted on the 4th November has already pushed a new shoot through the top of the compost. At least I know that one of the two pieces of root I received is growing. Once the cold weather arrives this shoot might wish it had stayed underground.

I've being tracking the mild November temperatures against the Central England Temperature Record. For us it’s finished in 4th place in this record stretching back 350 years.

I’ve now incorporated all the data for November so this is our final figure for the month. 

The month has continued our spell of dry weather with our total rainfall for the month just 25.8mm set against an average of 63.7mm.

I've updated our annual temperature and rainfall data here.

Our sowing and harvesting records for November have also been updated.