Rain Lady

Rain started 5 mins ago, Bye bye lawn mowing.

Went oppressive and sweaty an hour ago. Had to take off my thick top jumper! No rain here yet, but cloudy and looking very black towards Yorkshire. Garden warbler is back with non-stop warbling. Someone is happy. Swallows and curlews excited too. May like the prospects of warm showers. Should be a good crop of insects about this year due to all the lingering wet. Last year very dry and shrivelled by May.

Birch pollen haze today now the east wind is here -- all the way from N Europe -- pollen level high according to Met O . Sniffle and misery.

What's all this about a mild day? Felt very bleak in the wind. Mananged to dry a line of washing this morning then nuisance light showers this afternoon. Winter clothes back on.

Ventured into veg garden. Oh my -- looks like a battlefield a year after the military left. There's trenches still filled wth mud and could be some abandoned hardware overgrown with thick weeds and grass. It is clay soil and where bare it's become thoroughly compacted havng been beaten by almost constant rain since last July. A week's hot sun will turn it into concrete.

Sun this is nice. Will have to start watering ...

Keep up the good work Pennines and Peaks. Unusual for us on this western side to miss the deluges. Here only 1.5mm over last 8 days,. Like winter out there though. Persishing cold NNW wind this morning. Spring very hesitant. Yesterday a neighbouring farmer, much dependent on bought in cheap grain for winter feed for stock, told me of his worries about supply next winter. In the UK arable areas normal amounts of winter wheat couldn't be sown due to constantly sodden land -- and in many places where it was sown the germination has been poor and seedlings have died. So as conditions have improved there has been a switch to spring sown cereals. However due to high demand, seed for spring sowing is now almost impossible to get. Likely to be an expensive and/or hungry winter for us all.

damianslaw Me too. Supposed tp be raining accordimg to radar. I leep checking but though cold and gloomy it's dry. Had a decent almost dry week plus some sunshine.

Grand dry day. Swallows back chattering excitedly on electric wires. Theres's plenty of insects already due to the wetness. I fear a plague of midges this year.

Rush2019 Thought it was just us covered in moss! Never seen so much. Anything that hasn't moved has got thickly coated by this spring.

Flying spits and warm sun today, Now a streamer from the NNW with heavy pulses of proper rain is here and ended outdoor work

12.5mm picked up this morn for previous 24hrs. April so far 131.7mm. Year so far 683.1 mm. Record wet April measured here was 181.9mm in 1970. but that followed a very dry March and then we had a dry May and June. Jolly bleak unless sun pops out. Very glad I made a batch of Xmas puds just before Easter. Still 2 left.

Jan Still wearing at least 3 or 4 layers all over even indoors. Michelin Man style. So dark and wet and horrible I gave up the outdoors and had a snooze, hoping sun would be out again by tea time. Not a glimpse anywhere.

Windy, wet and feeling bleak. Some sun ths morning and temp rose to 9.5C. Now 8.2 C but feels colder. Spring has been put back in its box.

Clouding up more now. A beautiful new hatched orange tip butterfly flitting about in the sunshine this morning. First signs of pink buds on apple tree.

Sun. This is nice. Many birds busy at last setting up nesting and defending territories. The willow warbler came back last Saturday to its favourite patch, about 3 days early. Surprising considering the appalling weather since then. So a day for outdoor work -- but where to start?

Beefy shower streamer here now from north with powerful hail.

A little hail shower half an hout ago. Looks like more to come as there's dark clouds to north. 9.3mm for the last 24hrs expected more. 116.9mm for April so far. That's 668.3mm now for this year.

What a crazy day - lightning earlier this eve in that belt of squally heavy rain which came through the northwest. During the day a mad mix up of hot sun (briefly) and icy machine gun hail and lashing rain. Trees swaying in the spells of violent NW wind. Collected 9.0 mm this morning at 9 GMT. Current total for April is 107.6mm. Spent last few days trying to make progress with outdoor work, but everywhere is just too saturated to manage. Utterly disheartening. At a simple level the sodden veg garden is covered with thick lush weedy grass grown well in the warmer temperatures. There's no way anyone can even walk on it. But I could weep for the fields. Decades of work maintaining the network of tile drains and costing many thousands of pounds is now all for nothing. The drains have been silted up in the heavy rain since the start of July last year and it is impossible to get machinery on the land to clear them without causing damage. So now there is rush invasion taking over other species in the meadows. Even if the rain is suiddenly switched off it will be a very long time before the fields dry out and normal farming resumes. I've been told that arable farmers are also having problems. Seeds not yet in the soil. Overwintering crops ruined. I fear for food supplies whether for humans and farm animals next winter. Doubtful if places abroad can supply us reliably and cheaply when distrurbed weather patterns seem to be a worldwide problem.

Rain thumping down tonight here.

14.1mm for yesterday. April so far 82.2 mm. But caculating the last 31 days we've had 240.0 mm. Light rain at present and a softer feel to the day now that vicious wind has gone, Surprised temp dropped to 2.5C last night.

Metwatch Interesting to see the moss coatings everywhere. We have an unusual amount this winter/ spring -- places I've never seen it before.

Vile gale and rain. Large tree branches bending. Just had a phone call from a friend in Preston and she hadn't noticed weather was bad today.

carinthian Your farmer friend at Skipton is spot on!

An awful lot more to come. A big plume of wetness on the way. earth :: a global map of wind, weather, and ocean conditions EARTH.NULLSCHOOL.NET See current wind, weather, ocean, and pollution conditions, as forecast by supercomputers, on an interactive animated map. Updated every three hours.