Still no real rainfall in your area?

[cloudscapes]

Our first wonderfull 2mm of rain, my water butts and garden breathed a small sigh of relief. Still a light drizzle falling and the temperature is 55.5^o.

[peterf]

No rain at all here , my veg are not looking to good ,tap water is just not good enough

The nearest station i can find is st albans which says 45.5 mm since april 1st (Dont know how accurate it is)

http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/WXDailyHistory.asp?ID=IHERTFOR18&graphspan=custom&month=4&day=1&year=2010&monthend=7&dayend=12&yearend=2010

iv'e got onions going to seed like there's no tomorrow.spuds and sweetcorn is starting to suffer also.

it will come, just may be a tad too late for certain crops.

[Liquid]

We had about 15mm approx in West Norwich today, needed it, since my back garden is like a dust bowl. However i was disappointed then we had no storms with the rain.

[Terminal Moraine]

5.0 mm here since midnight but we need about 35mm to give the ground a good soaking. It's looking hopeful for more rain over the next few days but debatable as to whether we get that amount.

[Thundery wintry showers]

It's striking how things in the past few years have either been far too wet or far too dry. What ever happened to 'average'?

I think this is not that unusual. For instance in the 1970s, we had problems with it being too dry during 1975 and most of 1976, and then Autumn 1976 was phenomenally wet. We had a number of cool cloudy wet summers and soggy springs between 1978 and 1988 inclusive, separated by a problematic drought year in 1984, and then 1989-1991 had problems with drought in eastern and southern regions while 1989 & 1990 ironically also had problems with excess rainfall in the north-west. Then of course we had the 1995 drought, and exceptional wetness at times in 1998-2001.

However, the shortage of rainfall so far this year has broken long-standing records in some parts of the country, so while having problems with dryness isn't unusual in itself, the extent of the problem this time around is unusual.

There's been plenty of rain here in Norwich today (I see Liquid picked up on this before I did!), so chances of the grass making a recovery- it's pretty barren around the campus at the moment with only two other days of meaningful rain since early May (the thunder-days of 6 and 8 June).

[Louby]

We have had soo little in the past few weeks, I assumed it rained overnight at some point as the chairs outside were wet, but the ground didn't benefit from it at all, so it must have been very little. The ground is starting to crack here, but then again I do live on clay, so easily dried and cracked.

Any idea where I can get rain data for the past couple of months for my area?

[Thundery wintry showers]

I'm not aware of any official sites you can get real-time (or near real-time) data for, but there are personal weather stations' data you can get at Weather Underground, such as here:

http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/WXDailyHistory.asp?ID=ISURREYR2&graphspan=month&month=7&day=12&year=2010

Also the "actual and anomaly maps" at the Met Office website should give a reasonable guide:

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/anomacts/

[Paul]

You can also get figures which are derived from the radar from nw extra for each county in the UK (all subscriptions including radar only include this)

http://www.netweathe...tion=rain;sess=

Surrey is showing as (in mm)

April 37.05

May 53.76

June 30.68

[Louby]

Well thanking you both kindly.

It looks like we have about 1mm of rain in the past four weeks in Surrey, not very much at all!

[reef]

4.0mm of rain here today, the first measurable amount this month. Its not really enough to help the garden, but this week looks like it will see to that!

[ZONE 51]

Well thanking you both kindly.

It looks like we have about 1mm of rain in the past four weeks in Surrey, not very much at all!

that sounds about right i dont remember much rain since 2months and the ground shows it..very dusty , brown grass at the park and lots of leaves dried to a crisp..must see the rainfall stats u asked for when there posted

Edited July 13, 2010 by nimbilus

[Louby]

We have had another little shower early this morning, but nothing to get excited over that is for sure, according to the local schools weather site 0.5mm

[peterf]

fingers crossed for something decent here during the early hours tomorrow.i'm going to put the big tarps up over my water cubes and hope for the best.

[TEITS]

Unfortunately didn't see much rain yesterday so our total so far for July is only 3mm. Im not expecting much today due to the heaviest rain likely to affect N/W England.

[Paul Sherman]

Amazingly we did very well out of yesterday and everything has gone green again (Does not take much LOL) Had about 23mm here with Shoeburyness getting 19mm according to the Meto, we got stuck under a line that kept back-building from 5am until 10am. Now a fine Drizzly rain which is doing the grass the world of good.

Paul S

[sunny scunny]

It rained for around 4 hours here yesterday, but not much of it was on the heavy side unfortunately.Hopefully the gardens will get a good soaking in the next few days, but im not confident.

[Discombobulation Man]

We're still on 8mm here for the last 3 months, yet again we managed to miss all the rain bar a few spots.

[TonyH]

We're still on 8mm here for the last 3 months, yet again we managed to miss all the rain bar a few spots.

That cant be right, NW rain totals based on the radar for London are:

April 17.68mm

May 28.33mm

June 17.28mm

Total: 63.29mm

Perhaps you meant to put 80mm, as little as only 8mm in 3 months has never been recorded in the UK?

Edited July 13, 2010 by Tonyh

[Thundery wintry showers]

N-W's figures are only a regional average, so it is possible that individual locations may have had lower totals. Still, 8mm in three months seems unrealistically low and may be a case of the rain gauge under-recording.

[Radiating Dendrite]

8mm may sound low but I would not bet against it.

Up until last night we had not seen rain for around 6 weeks. Even when it does rain here it is usually very light.

[TonyH]

8mm may sound low but I would not bet against it.

Up until last night we had not seen rain for around 6 weeks. Even when it does rain here it is usually very light.

Checking the posters other posts, he did previously state that the gauge is very sheltered by buildings, it is probably only catching a fraction of the actual rainfall.

Highly doubtful any spot has had under even 25mm for those 3 months though, as even that would probably be a UK record low total.

[Guest North Sea Snow Convection]

There was some welcome ordinary rain last night and Sunday nights storm threat thankfully only gave a few rumbles of thunder and just heavy rain - so the garden is grateful for that without being flooded out with anything extreme after the dry very warm sunny weather of recent weeks.

Michael Fish at lunchtime suggested that the south east corner might miss the worst of the heavy thundery showers this week with a bit of luck. Hopefully he is right - just some more ordinary rain occasionally is all that is wanted by me and enough to be able to leave the watering can alone for a short while before hopefully the weather settles down again this weekend.

[peterf]

fingers crossed for something decent here during the early hours tomorrow.i'm going to put the big tarps up over my water cubes and hope for the best.

pleased i set them up.it's lashing down here with a lot more to come.4 cubes to be filled and i dont think it'll be a problem lol.

might have to cut the grass on friday though.

[William of Walworth]

Rain here today, in this part of SW Wales at least has (so far) far undershot the totals expected on this morning's BBC forecast .... very modest totals in sheltered Swansea at least. Has the real rain swung further North than anticipated originally?

[J10]

Rain here today, in this part of SW Wales at least has (so far) far undershot the totals expected on this morning's BBC forecast .... very modest totals in sheltered Swansea at least. Has the real rain swung further North than anticipated originally?

What happened today was very close to that forecast from GFS yesterday, with the main rain pushing through the Irish Sea. Whereas the NAE model was always going for the heaviest rain around our area. For once GFS and NMM beat NAE.

So the heavy rain clipped Pembrokeshire, while we largely missed out. In fact we had heavier from a weaker front which pushed through around 6.15-7pm.