Monthly commentary
January 2001
January was strange: a wet start, then a very dry patch from the 6th
to the 19th, and then a wettish ten days to end with. There were 14
days without rain, including 8 days one after the other, which must be
some sort of record for this winter. The total for the month was
132mm, with the highest for a single day of 22mm.
February 2001
February followed January in being drier than we have become used to.
There were 116mm of rain (including a bit of snow), and in the period
13th–25th February there was only 2mm of rain. But when the rain did
come, it was mostly in largeish doses: one day with 19mm, one with
15mm, two with 13mm and three with 11mm.
March 2001
March dismally continued the wet season. There were only 10 days
without rain, compared with 14 in February, a shorter month anyway.
The total rainfall for the month was 156mm, giving a total of 404mm
for year so far. April looks like going the same way: the first six
days produced 45mm of rain.
April 2001
April was what it is supposed to be: showery. The middle was quite
dry: from 9th to 21st there was only 6mm of rain. But when it did
rain, it came down by the bucketful. 33mm fell on 22nd, 18mm on 28th,
16mm on 3rd, 13mm on 5th and 9mm on 6th, mostly in short sharp bursts.
So 89mm, or nearly 75%, of the month's 122mm of rainfall came at us on
those five days! There were 14 days without rain, as in January and
February. But it was cold, and the wind has stayed in the north into the
first week of May. But at least the Bank Holiday was dry and mostly
sunny for a change, and the plants, birds and insects can get on with
Spring.
May 2001
Summer really arrived, with long days of blue skies, very little rain
and light or non-existant winds. The vegetables (and the weeds) have
been taking full advantage and are putting on a lot of weight. But it
is astonishing that the vegetables have got their roots down into the
wet earth only a few inches below the surface, and I have not had to
water them at all. There were only 5 rain days in the month, giving
34mm in all, and so 26 with no rain, 14 of them one after the other
(18–31).
June 2001
June was the driest month of the year so far, with 32mm, even less than
May. In fact there were only six days with any rain at all. It also
contributed to the longest number of consecutive days without rain:
from 18 May to 13 June, four weeks all but one day. Even though I have
not had to water the veg patch, my small pond has suffered from
evaporation, and I have had to top it up twice. June is the prime
month for the pond's wild life, and I don't want to lose the creatures
I have. Apart from the usual tadpoles, I have some resident frogs, one
of which comes out and sits on the warm stones or even once on a
waterlily leaf! There are also about seven newts, many water beetles
and pondskaters and many many snails. Lately there has been a
medicinal leech, Hirudo medicinalis, the one with teeth, so no
paddling for me! And on 21 June, the longest day, seven nymphs of the
Emperor dragonfly, Anax imperator, hatched out, leaving their skins.
One was still sitting drying and pumping up its wings in the sunshine
when I went to look. (One of the nymph cases has been added to the
Stickland's school's wildlife collection.)
Above: A dragonfly emerging from its nymph case. The pale body
will darken and gain its adult patterns when the creature is fully
out. Meanwhile it is waiting for its legs to strengthen so that it can
grasp the lily stalk itself instead of relying on the nymph case's
empty legs for support.
Above: A dragonfly has fully emerged from its nymph case and is
gripping a stalk while it 'pumps up' its wings. When completely inflated
the wings will stick out on either side of its body (like an
aircraft's wings) instead of lying parallel to the body. It seems
extraordinary that the body of the dragonfly is already twice the
length of the nymph case it has emerged from. The whole process, from
the first breaking open of the nymph case to the first flight of the
new dragonfly, may take several hours.
July 2001
July was a pretty average sort of Evershot summer month: some quite
heavy bursts of rain with some quite long dry spells too. The total
rainfall was 88mm on 12 days, the highest fall being 28mm (just over
an inch) on the 3rd. There were therefore 19 days with no rain, 10 of
them together at the end of the month. So I have had to top up the
pond again.
August 2001
August too was an average summer month for rainfall. There was a
total of 61mm, nearly all in heavy showers on three or four days. In
fact, two-thirds fell on three days, the 9th (9mm), the 18th (17mm)
and the 31st (13mm). There were 18 days without rain, and so 13 days
with at least some. The 61mm compares with May (34mm), June (32mm) and
July (88mm).
September 2001
I have now been collecting rainfall data for one complete year, and
the figures are interesting. The annual rainfall is 60% up on the
average for the last decade or so at 1585mm, where we would have
expected only about 990mm. Even more extraordinary, the total for
October, November and December last year was 49.46% of the total for
the whole year. So half the rain fell in a quarter of the year.
September 2001 produced 60mm, almost the same as August, with rain on
11 days and no rain on 19. Of that 60mm, 29mm or virtually half fell
on one day, the 30th. It will be interesting now to see how this
autumn compares with last year.
October 2001
Everyone knows October 2001 was the mildest October since records
began. Here it was also the wettest month this year, with 192mm. 132mm
fell on just five days: 1st, 7th (most with 33mm), 19th, 22nd and
25th, with the rest (60mm) pretty well spread out over the month. The
total for the year so far is 993mm, slightly above the average for the
whole year (988mm), with still two months to go. (Another comparison: a
weatherman in the Lake District, one of the wettest parts of England,
reported in the third week of October that rainfall there had reached
1000mm for the year.) But at least October 2001 in Evershot was not up
to the standard of October 2000, which gave us 266mm.
November 2001
November was an amazingly dry month this year. We had only 74mm of
rain. Last year we had over three times as much in the month, and the
number of dry days was 8, against 18 this year! Of the 74mm this year,
65mm (88%) fell on 5 days: 7th, 25th, 28th, 29th and 30th. Of course,
last year was exceptionally wet, but it makes one wonder about
'averages' and other statistics. Is there really such a thing as a
normal year? Perhaps there never has been, and all the statisticians
can show us is that each year is a one-off!
December 2001
Compared with the extremely wet Autumn 2000, 2001 has been extremely
dry. October 2000 (266mm), November 2000 (232mm) and December 2000
(286mm) make a total of 784mm. October 2001 (192mm), November 2001
(74mm) and December 2001 (55mm) give a total of 321mm. Indeed, the whole
year seems to have been pretty dry, with a total of only 1122mm,
compared with Peter Cooper's total for 2000 of 1375mm. December itself
had 21 rainless days with only two days (3rd and 4th, each with 17mm)
into double figures. It will be interesting to see what 2002 brings.