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Lack of precipitation East Dorset

Posted: Fri Jun 15, 2018 3:24 pm
by Martin Rowley
... With a groan I heard one of our illustrious weather presenters recently trot out the phrase ... "much needed rain", when discussing a cold front swinging SE'ward over England. Said front produced 0.1 mm of rain here.

We are beginning to experience a marked deficit in rainfall hereabouts. The recent 'winter-half' precipitation [October - March] for us represented 91% of the LTA, and it was only thanks to a >200% out-turn in March that the figure wasn't lower.

April was also wet (166%), but by then of course the evapotranspiration (ETp) figures are climbing sharply. And both May (59%) and this month so far (just the aforementioned 0.1 mm) have been notably dry, when the ETp figures are, on average, around 80 - 90 mm per month; we had a spell of low RH/ east-northeasterlies recently which must have locally enhanced those figures.

The output from longer-range models (e.g. GFS) don't offer much relief this month, and neither do the GPC/MetOffice outputs for June, July, August.

Could be an interesting situation developing for the southern part of England/Britain .... anyone else got thoughts on this?

Martin.

Re: Lack of precipitation East Dorset

Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2018 11:08 am
by Len Wood
Compared to your location Martin, our dry spell only started in May.
37.3 mm in May. (Average 61 mm)
8.8 mm to 17th June. (Average 65 mm)

The 'winter-half' precipitation [October - March] for Wembury was 130% of LTA.

Our South West Water reservoirs are fairly full at around 90% so there is no worry on that count atm.
There is only Burrator which is 55%, but the others can supply when this gets too low.

https://www.southwestwater.co.uk/enviro ... -storages/