Fears Of A Summer Drought In Britain
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By Paul Homewood
The wettest inhabited place in England is "bone dry" as the prospect of a summer drought loomed closer.
Seathwaite, in Borrowdale, Cumbria, typically receives between two and three metres of rainfall per year. But the River Derwent has gone for so long without sufficient rain, its rocky bed is exposed.
Meanwhile, gorse fires in Oban, on the west coast of Scotland, forced a beach to be evacuated over the weekend as temperatures soared to an unseasonal 18C.
It comes amid fears that the country may be subjected to a summer drought, with rivers and reservoirs experiencing dwindling water levels following one of the driest winter in more than 20 years.
The River Derwent at its usual levels Credit: Paul Kingston / NNP
They were also advised to swap showers for baths, use sponges instead of hoses to clean cars and to plant plants such as geraniums, marigolds, alyssum and petunias, which resist droughts.
It’s certainly been pretty dry in Britain in the last few months, but not exceptionally so.
The Telegraph claims that last winter was one of the driest in more than 20 years. But in fact you only have to go back to 2006 to find a drier one.
There have also been 19 drier winters since 1910.
Climate scientists, of course, continually tell us that winters are supposed to be getting wetter because of global warming!
Rainfall in March was actually slightly above average, and April was not excessively dry either.
Of course, drought is an accumulative thing. If we look at the hydrological year so far, since last October, we can see that it has been the 8th driest. The driest was 1975/6.
So again, we find there is absolutely nothing unusual happening this year.
If you really want to see an exceptional spell, you can go back to 1929.
The first nine months that year were, by a long way, the driest on record:
Yet, even more astonishingly, this was followed record rainfall for the next four months.
Not only was this wettest October to January period in the UK, again by a long way. It was also the wettest 4-month period at any time of year.
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May 8, 2017 at 10:09PM
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