Drought in South Gloucestershire

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Cyres

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The water situation in our area is getting dire. All the normally wet ditches on my perms are bone dry. Maize is up but looks like it was planted in a desert.
Saw some ground being ploughed yesterday. Dust clouds and looked like they were busting concrete.
I recorded 16mm of rain in all of April and to date 0.5mm in May. My garden is parched and having to water daily almost fighting a loosing battle.
Last year I recorded 467 mm rain up to end of May. This year 151mm to date.
It's not looking at all good.
D
 
Whether you want to call it global warming or whatever, we do seem to be having extremes in weather.
No reservoirs have been built in 30 years and whilst there are a number of planned, maybe even started now, I do wonder if they will be enough.
 
Cyres said:
The water situation in our area is getting dire. All the normally wet ditches on my perms are bone dry. Maize is up but looks like it was planted in a desert.
Saw some ground being ploughed yesterday. Dust clouds and looked like they were busting concrete.
I recorded 16mm of rain in all of April and to date 0.5mm in May. My garden is parched and having to water daily almost fighting a loosing battle.
Last year I recorded 467 mm rain up to end of May. This year 151mm to date.
It's not looking at all good.
D
Click to expand...
That’s even worse than for us. We had 2.3mm in march, 26.4mm in April but so far nothing in May.
We are on clay so the grass is growing ok, but it’s bloody rock hard!

Hoping for some rain soon
 
Thunderstorms here in Hereford yesterday, but the ground was so dry and hard, most of it was funnelling straight off the fields and onto the roads, which were covered in torrents of water. This would have run off very quickly to the rivers, but they looked unchanged this morning. The ground is already drying again. The storms were also pretty localised, and short lived, all be it quite heavy.
 
Hello, I mentioned that on PW, They are starting a project to build a huge Reservoir in the Vale, Likely dwarf Farmoor 1 and 2 , Taking water from the Thames 5/6 miles away, They have started digging out the Clay to trial the high banks, it is taking 200 Acres off my friends farm, A ten year project so 2035 even longer maybe
 
Cyres said:
The water situation in our area is getting dire. All the normally wet ditches on my perms are bone dry. Maize is up but looks like it was planted in a desert.
Saw some ground being ploughed yesterday. Dust clouds and looked like they were busting concrete.
I recorded 16mm of rain in all of April and to date 0.5mm in May. My garden is parched and having to water daily almost fighting a loosing battle.
Last year I recorded 467 mm rain up to end of May. This year 151mm to date.
It's not looking at all good.
D
Click to expand...
Currently raining in Filton but as @west_meon says, most of it is going to run off PDQ! Forecast for next week is low 20s and sunny all week. Not looking good :(
 
Have had a bit of rain over last 3 days in south wales, not enough, but has kicked the grass off a bit to start.
 
A bit of a soak here a couple of nights ago, which helped, but it's very dry.

I expect some other Devon residents will remember the proposed Swincombe reservoir on Dartmoor, which would have solved the West Country water problem for years. It was knocked on the head because a certain Lady Sayer opposed it because some rare moss grew there!
 
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Well we have just had 3mm!
I try and harvest all the rain off my roofs.
Storage capacity of about 2,000 litres down to about 750 litres at present.
It's not looking good at all.
D
 
Very dry here in Grampian. S facing barley brae parks still very sparse and unlikely now to recover imho. More obvious at midday, with sun behind. No meaningful rain last three weeks and more, not a slug moving overground at night.

Private water supplies will be impacted across the shire, a relatively dry winter past. A total contrast to last year.

image.webp

That said I do recall stalking with a party here when it was 27°C max every day in similar droughty conditions ( - hotter than it was in the Sahara all week!)
 
Its that dry up here that many local fields are beginning to blow away ! Lucky we have lots of ponds i made on our place but wild bird plots are looking impossible to plant this year- thankfully last year i planted lots of chicory that has a tap root and is showing
 
Just upgraded our water buts, now have over 3000L capacity.
But only got a couple of hundred litres.
It will all come right in the end
 
Might be too late. Maize around me on some stoney ground might fail. Speaking to an agricultural contractor who had been putting in new water supply ground was bone dry at 750 mm.
Ist cut silage came off a couple of weeks ago has done nothing the dry winds we had is the killer.
Talk of making hay end of this week!
D
 
It's been so dry here in Angus that my 15 year old cob has come down with laminitis for the first time in his life. The grass isn't getting a chance to properly grow and is full of condensed sugars as a result. We could really do with a good soaking
 
Cyres said:
The water situation in our area is getting dire. All the normally wet ditches on my perms are bone dry. Maize is up but looks like it was planted in a desert.
Saw some ground being ploughed yesterday. Dust clouds and looked like they were busting concrete.
I recorded 16mm of rain in all of April and to date 0.5mm in May. My garden is parched and having to water daily almost fighting a loosing battle.
Last year I recorded 467 mm rain up to end of May. This year 151mm to date.
It's not looking at all good.
D
Click to expand...
Same UK wide mate, but get a deluge in tbe next month or similar and mother nature will cat h up pronto
 
I took a video of a young badgers snuffling around some leaves on the side of the road at 4 pm today- guessing they be hungry now with the limited slugs and bugs about due to it being dry. These leave would be a bit damp from recent showers.
 

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AccuWeather is suggesting we will get 15-20mm between the 24th and 27th, but that is a long way off and a lot can change before then.
 
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