Worryingly dry

[stainesbloke]

4 hours ago, Dark Horse said:

 

Yeah I agree in terms of leaks and greed but a huge population doesn't help. I'm in favour of nationalisation of important infrastructure like the water supply, railways etc. Maybe they won't be treated like a cash cow then.

Yes, I agree with you, too much privatisation is bad and it’s gone to a bit of an extreme in the UK. I remember the latter years of the Thatcher government and then the Major government and it seemed like every week they were privatising something! Unfortunately, we can’t do much about a large population, but cities like London have had 8 million + since before WW2. It’s the complete lack of investment that grinds my gears about the UK

[hillbilly]

5 hours ago, piglet said:

Yes agreed.

Of all the utilities, water supply is crucial and should not be run for shareholder profit.

When profit becomes more important than the core service, engineers get replaced by money men.

£216m fines for Southern Water demonstrated that they can't be trusted and luckily they got caught.

We need engineers with the vision of Brunel and Bazalgette, not MBAs.

Personally i think water should not have been privatised but wether it would have been any better is debated.Yes privately the people who put money in will get money out,why else would they put money in but left in the public domain where a Politician decides what to do with the money it would be a squander of monies on a Biblical scale!

[Sunny76]

5 hours ago, Dark Horse said:

I don't think it's scaremongering as we're in a prolonged dry spell with no real end in sight. Rarely was the ground up here cracked and tinder dry like it is now this early. Bar 1976, 1995, 2018 and last year this didn't occur here. It has already again this year and we're not much into summer. A knee jerk reaction would be saying it'll be dry for the rest of summer and into the Autumn which is probably unlikely but I don't think it's bad to talk about how dry things are right now so it's not a taboo.

Yeah I agree in terms of leaks and greed but a huge population doesn't help. I'm in favour of nationalisation of important infrastructure like the water supply, railways etc. Maybe they won't be treated like a cash cow then.

It is scaremongering pure and simple.

We need some weeks of warm and hot sunny weather. After months of damp cool and rainy conditions, a few weeks of very dry weather is hardly Armageddon.

[hillbilly]

5 minutes ago, Sunny76 said:

It is scaremongering pure and simple.

We need some weeks of warm and hot sunny weather. After months of damp cool and rainy conditions, a few weeks of very dry weather is hardly Armageddon.

Yes,its not even remotely as dry as last year here in the Pennines.

 

[WillinGlossop]

1 minute ago, hillbilly said:

Yes,its not even remotely as dry as last year here in the Pennines.

 

The ground underfoot is rock solid walking around locally… but the vegetation, trees & fields are predominantly green around here despite 3 weeks of dry, warmish but breezy sunny weather… 

[Dark Horse]

21 minutes ago, Sunny76 said:

It is scaremongering pure and simple.

We need some weeks of warm and hot sunny weather. After months of damp cool and rainy conditions, a few weeks of very dry weather is hardly Armageddon.

I'm going off things locally for the most part. Your about 200 miles south of here and boy have we heard you moan for weeks about a bit of cool dull weather which is going to be a distant memory soon enough. Not only that but you do realise you have a desalination plant in London? Built funnily enough because of the things I've been "scaremongering" about. So you'll be fine.

[Sunny76]

1 minute ago, Dark Horse said:

I'm going off things locally for the most part. Your about 200 miles south of here and boy have we heard you moan for weeks about a bit of cool dull weather which is going to be a distant memory soon enough. Not only that but you do realise you have a desalination plant in London? Built funnily enough because of the things I've been "scaremongering" about. So you'll be fine.

The cool weather hasn’t really left us. I have every right to moan, among others who have endured the same old tiring cold North Sea rubbish. 
 

We had months of dull cold and rainy weather, so it’s not my problem if successive governments have failed to improve the infrastructure. 
 

I think some people on here worry too much about the lack of rain, when we have too much of it at times. 

[damianslaw]

19 minutes ago, WillinGlossop said:

The ground underfoot is rock solid walking around locally… but the vegetation, trees & fields are predominantly green around here despite 3 weeks of dry, warmish but breezy sunny weather… 

I think timing has been a factor, the dry spell has come on the back of a preety wet spell but not especially so. Lack of heat also has had an affect. A 3 week bone dry spell from late June onwards probably have greater affect.

[Dark Horse]

3 minutes ago, Sunny76 said:

The cool weather hasn’t really left us. I have every right to moan, among others who have endured the same old tiring cold North Sea rubbish. 
 

We had months of dull cold and rainy weather, so it’s not my problem if successive governments have failed to improve the infrastructure. 
 

I think some people on here worry too much about the lack of rain, when we have too much of it at times. 

Rubbish lol. We don't even have proper Atlantic weather systems anymore. It's been dead for ages. Can't remember the last proper gale. 

[B87]

We just had one of the wettest springs on record. Even of there was no more rainfall for the rest of June, we would still be above average for the YTD.

[Cheshire Freeze]

1 minute ago, Dark Horse said:

Rubbish lol. We don't even have proper Atlantic weather systems anymore. It's been dead for ages. Can't remember the last proper gale. 

Fully agree. Glad I’m not the only one that’s noticed we only get half hearted Atlantic attempts these days.

Notice the same pattern often happens in the modelling- low pressure shown to barrel across the S or middle of the UK at D7 or 8, only for it to be pulled N as the day approaches with the Azores HP muscling in further S.

This is happening because what climatology is telling the model is being overridden for the time being by fast paced climate change affecting the here and now. So, ultimately what *should* happen in any given modelled scenario (according to the physics of old) is no longer happening and the model has to correct itself in accordance with the initialising data.

[damianslaw]

7 minutes ago, Dark Horse said:

Rubbish lol. We don't even have proper Atlantic weather systems anymore. It's been dead for ages. Can't remember the last proper gale. 

March and April brought atlantic driven weather a bit of return to normality after a blocked winter, but since mid May back to blocked atlantic. I feel la nina reason why which typically promotes atlantic ridges, el nino promotes atlantic troughs with oomph!

[Azazel]

Didn’t we also have a record breaking storm the February before last? Lost tiles off my roof.

 

We have this conversation every year - after 8 months of rain, we have a few dry weeks and people compare us to Qatar and envision a future where we live like Mad Max.

[Don]

Amazing how fast the ground dries out, following a prolonged wet spring!

[*Stormforce~beka*]

36 minutes ago, Don said:

Amazing how fast the ground dries out, following a prolonged wet spring!

I was thinking that! Mental!!

[Frigid]

2 hours ago, Dark Horse said:

Rubbish lol. We don't even have proper Atlantic weather systems anymore. It's been dead for ages. Can't remember the last proper gale. 

18th February 2022, last time I could hear the wind. Since then, nothing.. Feel like since December 2020, the Atlantic has been in hibernation mode. There's stats to back this up, the last decade was exceptionally wet with the Atlantic mentioned constantly. Now, it's the lack of Atlantic influence and it's becoming quite prominent. 

[Buzz]

17 hours ago, piglet said:

Yes agreed.

Of all the utilities, water supply is crucial and should not be run for shareholder profit.

When profit becomes more important than the core service, engineers get replaced by money men.

£216m fines for Southern Water demonstrated that they can't be trusted and luckily they got caught.

We need engineers with the vision of Brunel and Bazalgette, not MBAs.

And then there's foreign investors .......... for example, China Investment Corporation (a sovereign wealth fund that manages part of the People's Republic of China's foreign exchange reserves) owns 9% of Thames Water. And that's not all when it comes to China dabbling in UK industries.

[piglet]

10 hours ago, Don said:

Amazing how fast the ground dries out, following a prolonged wet spring!

Yes, that's exactly correct.

It's clear that in this discussion, there are different perceptions of weather and rainfall. I would love to see some rain here, despite the fact it was very wet earlier on in the year

Sitting in the middle of the South Downs, might sound nice, but if you do things like gardening, a grower or a farmer, it's a different story. Several hundred feet of chalk underfoot means that you can have a downpour one day and it's a fleeting memory the next.

I'm already out of stored water and it's only early June. Any rain now will either roll off the soil or disappear into the sponge.

The town is dirty and dusty, the drains smell. A telling chalk stream, a winterbourne either has or will dry up.

Of course it's green, in places, the downland turf has adapted over centuries, but a couple of years ago, thanks to another dry spring, whole fields of cereals did not germinate.

In July and August last year, you could smell the baked soil. It was wall to wall brown. When the native grass gives up, you know it's bad.

If I ever get the chance to move, it will be north and west. I've had it with heat and droughts.

[piglet]

12 hours ago, hillbilly said:

Personally i think water should not have been privatised but wether it would have been any better is debated.Yes privately the people who put money in will get money out,why else would they put money in but left in the public domain where a Politician decides what to do with the money it would be a squander of monies on a Biblical scale!

After decades in the business, I can tell you that you can't win.

Before privatisation, there was little money from sources other than the customer. Remember, that water companies, the regional ones, have two jobs to do. Supply drinking water and treat sewage. By far the most neglected was the waste water side of the business. Many of the treatment works were run on a shoestring by local councils.

There was no substantial investment, other than essential repairs.

After privatisation, it was a boom time for the now directors to branch out into money-making schemes like vehicle leasing  and estate agency. Out went the Cortinas, in came the 5-Series BMWs.

The core business suddenly became a bit of a nuisance.

It all came to a head a couple of years ago when Southern Water landed up in a Crown Court and found guilty on 51 charges of deliberate pollution for financial gain. They were concentrating on pleasing their majority shareholders and not bothering with cr*p in the rivers and on the  beaches.

It's why we now have all the hooha about storm overflows, something no-one had heard of before, and now they've got to put their hands in their pockets.

What has gone, is the engineer led, pride in doing a good job, pioneering improvements from the likes of Joseph Bazalgette.

[kold weather]

12 hours ago, B87 said:

We just had one of the wettest springs on record. Even of there was no more rainfall for the rest of June, we would still be above average for the YTD.

I think a slight issue is that a large chunk of that rain has come after winter, and spring rainfall doesn't have quite the same refilling qualities as the same amount would in winter time due to higher evaporation. 

Like @piglet there are already clear signs of distress in the grass down here. I understand though I've probably had 60hrs more sunshine in the last 2 weeks than places just 20-30 miles NE of here as I've often just been on the southern edge of the cloud boundary so the situation maybe better further north.

[Weather-history]

It would be interesting to see how the UK especially England and Wales would have coped with its water resources if we were getting the kind of  rainfalls totals that were recorded during the late Victorian/Edwardian period.

 16 years, (2007-2022) England and Wales (EWP) rainfall average per annum: 986mm

Compare that to 1887-1902 per annum: 846.5mm

The last 16 years were about 140mm wetter per year on average than the end of the Victorian and the start of Edwardian period. That was up to 1903, which was a very wet year but that was a blip (and it stands out like a sore thumb) as it return to form with another dryish period up to almost start of WW1.

1940s, 7 of those years were sub 900mm for annual rainfall for England and Wales including 5 on the bounce from 1941-1945,  there have been 5 since and including 2000.

 

 

Edited June 11, 2023 by Weather-history

[FetchCB]

20 Yrs ago the headlines were that climate modelling showed that London would have a climate similar to Paris and that the Al fresco lifestyle would thrive. 

Since then I have moved 120 miles from London to Peterborough and the climate in the last 6 yrs or so feels very much like London did 20 yrs ago. Long spells of dry, warm to hot temps. 

Whilst statistically 20 yrs is a very short dataset over millenia but I do believe the climate has changed and is on an upward trajectory both in terms of heat and dryness, possible more like southern France. Strategically with the water companies being in Private hands there appears to be a lack of strategic thinking across the UK of moving water North to South. Anglia water is building a pipe to shift water around East Anglia but it needs to be bigger than that. 

[RJBingham]

In the driest part of England, Anglian water storage is average for the time of the year, 90% or so, two new reservoirs being built, the problem is not lack of rain, it's lack of investment

" counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire and Essex, sees an average of just 626mm of rain per year."

no hosepipe ban last year, no water shortage.

Where is the driest place in the UK?

WWW.YOURWEATHER.CO.UK

---

Though famous for its wet weather, some parts of the UK can be surprisingly dry. Where gets the least rainfall according to the data?

 

[MP-R]

On 06/06/2023 at 22:17, Dark Horse said:

Rubbish lol. We don't even have proper Atlantic weather systems anymore. It's been dead for ages. Can't remember the last proper gale. 

A look through the chart archives would say otherwise…

[PeteG]

1 hour ago, FetchCB said:

 

Since then I have moved 120 miles from London to Peterborough and the climate in the last 6 yrs or so feels very much like London did 20 yrs ago. Long spells of dry, warm to hot temps. 

. 

You must have taken a roundabout route - Peterborough is about 75 miles from central London. 120 miles would take you to Nottingham.