A Gardener's Weather Diary

Friday, 1 February 2019

February Starts With A Dusting of Snow

January certainly departed on a cold note with the temperature remaining below freezing all day.

Temperature & Wind Chill Records 30 January - 01 February 2019

It remained misty all day long too along with a temperature of around -2.5°C (27.5°F) for most of the daylight hours. The coldest was -3.1°C (26.4°F) at 18:40.

Although it was the coldest day of the year it wasn't a record breaker. It was the coldest January day since 25 January 2013 when the temperature fell to -4.8°C (23.4°F) but to find a colder day, we only have to go back to late last February when the "Beast from the East" struck. On the 28 February 2018 the average daily temperature was -4.2°C (24.4°F) with a low of -5.7°C or 21.7°F.

February has started off with a very light dusting of snow.

The bird bath was well and truly frozen over and it looked like someone had already been trying to get a drink.

Some hot water soon thawed it out but I'll need to keep checking it throughout the day to see if it freezes over again.

Wednesday, 30 January 2019

Snow - No Show

The snow forecast for Tuesday afternoon and evening didn't show up. We had a few very light rain showers through the afternoon and evening amounting to 1.0mm in total so had it been snow it would only have been a light covering. It's continued cold though, with the wind chill effect making it feel even colder.

Temperature & Wind Chill Records 28-30 January 2019

The weather models seem to have had a rethink about the snow forecast for Thursday and that now appears to have done a disappearing act as well.

It was frosty overnight, Tuesday into Wednesday morning, and it looked as though we'd had the tiniest amount of snow when I ventured outside to thaw out the bird bath and top up the feeders.

The forecast is for the weather to remain cold for the rest of the week and through the weekend before turning milder next week.

Monday, 28 January 2019

Looking Forward to New Varieties

Last week was generally on the cool side apart from Friday and Saturday which turned out to be much milder. We are now on a downward temperature trend for the rest of the month and into the beginning of February. There is the possibility of some snow this week, along with the cold temperatures, but the forecasts are far from certain about the snowfall.

Temperature & Windchill Effects 21-27 January 2019

Sunday was a particularly windy day with the wind chill effect making it feel bitterly cold.

We did manage to get a few allotment jobs done and Sue has covered most of these in her blog post here.

With the new season's seed orders arriving in the post, and a couple of trips to local garden centres to supplement our online orders, a start to the new gardening year has begun even if we haven't yet sown any seeds. Each year we like to try a few new varieties of vegetables to see what we might be missing. It does means that over the years we've tried many different varieties, with potatoes and tomatoes the most prolific.

I think we've tried at least 43 different sorts of potato varieties. These are the ones I have photographic records of giving a list 43 different types. This year's new varieties will be Athlete, (a recommendation by Bill's Allotments 2 Plots of Heaven) Rudolph and British Queen. At the garden centre we thought Premiere would be new this year, but checking back we grew it back in 2012. We're also growing some Sarpo Mira this year, which doesn't appear on the list, but I can remember growing them in the past. It must have been a good few years ago.

Our Potato Varieties Over the Years

Casablanca Potatoes July 2017

We haven't tried quite as many tomato varieties, 41 if the listing below is correct but I'm sure there will be the odd omission. This year's new tomato variety will be Albenga. It's an Oxheart type originating from Northern Italy and a recommendation from Roger Brook the "No Dig Gardener". We were lucky enough to be given a couple of ripe tomatoes last year and we thought they tasted good and decided to give it a go.

Our Tomato Varieties Over the Years

Moneymaker Growing In 2011

Now I can't finish on tomatoes without mentioning our own record breaking tomato. Back in 2009 we grew some Brandywine tomatoes one of which grew to what we thought was an enormous size. We decided to make a YouTube video of this tomato being picked and sliced for sandwiches and called the video "A Monster Tomato". I know it's ten years ago now since we uploaded the video but since then it has had a staggering 206,000 views!. That's easily our most viewed video. I've added the video below just in case you are one of the few gardeners who hasn't seen it.

Monday, 21 January 2019

Tale of Two Halves

The weather has certainly turned much colder. It looks like it could be a month of two halves, the first half mild, and the last two weeks much colder. I was hoping that the change to much colder weather would at least get rid of the dull and dreary weather of the first couple of weeks of the new year, but we’ve unfortunately swapped the mild temperatures for cold ones and kept the dull and dreary conditions.

Temperature & Rainfall Records 01-21 January 2019

We visited Potteric Carr on Friday afternoon for a walk around the nature reserve.

It was a cold, cloudy day and any still water was still ice covered early in the afternoon.

There’d been some posts on Facebook showing some starling murmurations at the reserve. Thousands of starlings gather at the reserve and produce magical flying displays before they settle down to roost for the night.

Unfortunately for us they chose to carry out their display some distance from where we were standing but we still managed to get some photos and video of their display.

Friday, 18 January 2019

January Weather Arrives

There has most certainly been a change in the weather to more normal January temperatures. There doesn't appear to be anything worse than we might expect in January in the weather model output but there are some distinct differences in the forecasts as can be seen below.

The top forecast is from the GFS model and it doesn't forecast any below 0°C (32.0°F) temperatures before the 26th of the month. The bottom forecast uses the GEM model output and it is going for a much colder forecast over the next 10 days. Friday morning's actual temperature fell to -2.8°C (27.0°F) more in line with that GEM forecast. I'll keep a note and see which forecast is more accurate by the end of the month.

A couple of days ago I noticed a rose in the front border had a bud. I thought it must be left over from summer and didn't give it any chance of opening up. Wrong!

It managed to open up before the colder weather arrived.

Wednesday, 16 January 2019

Warmest and Windiest

The start of the new year means a fresh set of highest and lowest weather records for the year. Sunday set a couple of those producing the mildest and windiest day of the year.

Temperature Records 01-15 January 2019 (with Highest & Lowest values since 2009)

The temperature reached 11.4°C (52.5°F) on Sunday afternoon, the mildest this year, but accompanied by a gales force wind it wasn't the nicest of days. It was windy enough to make it into my top twenty list of windiest days since 2010. Even though it was the twelfth windiest day in almost ten years, as far as I know, it wasn't due to any named storm.

Almost half way through the month and January is turning out to be a mild month with the average temperature for January a couple of degrees Celsius above what we might expect. Nightime temperatures in particular have been well above average with some overnight temperatures exceeding average January daytime values.

Outside there are the first hopeful signs of spring as early flowering bulbs push through the surface of the soil.

It's nice to see the bulbs emerging but I'm guessing we've still got the worst of the winter weather to come.

Saturday, 12 January 2019

Continuing Dull and Mild

The dull and mild start to the new year continues but there are all sorts of stories about how the weather might change by the end of the month. I don't think anything is certain at the moment but it seems the longer range weather models are suggesting much colder conditions towards the end of January and into February probably as a result of that Sudden Stratospheric Warming event at the end of last year. The shorter range models haven't picked up on this cold weather pattern yet so anything could still happen.

Yesterday, Friday, we set out to see 60103 Flying Scotsman haul the Scotsman Salute a charter train from London Kings Cross to York. This was in memory of Sir William McAlpine who repatriated Flying Scotsman from America. Sir William was the owner of Flying Scotsman from 1973–1996.

Sir William bought Flying Scotsman for £25,000 and paid for the locomotive to be brought back to the UK from San Francisco where it had been on tour. He then paid for the locomotive to be restored and brought back into main line operation.

Wednesday, 9 January 2019

First Flowers of the Year

It's been a very dull and dreary start to the new year. Up until yesterday, Tuesday, my weather station hadn't recorded any sunshine hours at all. With all the cloud it's resulted in a pretty mild start to 2019 even if it's been on the dull side.