Is this the wettest drought on record

[old one eye]

I know us Brits are famous for banging on about the weather but this drought is now getting out of hand. I have memories of pictures of Aussies in the outback running about jumping up and down and screaming and generally being a little more stupid than normal because of two large drops of rain (the first in ten years) They don't know how lucky they are.

[Kinoulton]

I used to supply staff to a company who were prefectly innocently sorting out leaks for the major water companies. No shame there.

But the checking we had to do to find out all about our workers was as great as that for people working in nuclear power plants.

Apparently if we accidentally let an undercover tabloid or TV reporter into the ranks and he/she discovered the colossal waste of treated water that just gushes back into the Earth, then many many heads would roll.

[Bill W (2)]

Here in Essex there is a hosepipe ban.

And we have floods. The ditches are overflowing and the water table is high.

Somebody somewhere has not done their sums. Or having done them has failed to take the necessary action.

And the Badminton Horse Trials have been cancelled due to too much rain!!

I blame the government!!

Oh and BJ of course!

[kingneptuneii]

I'm geting fed up of being soaked by this drought, just like im sick of scraping global warming off my car every winter!

[Kinoulton]

Global warming applies to the Earth in general, but almost certainly not to Britain. Places that share the same line of latitude as us e.g. Manchester is straight across from Edmonton.

Edmonton is completely snow covered for most months every year, whereas Manchester is not, because we benefit from strange sea and air currents which keep us toasty.

Once we muck up the general order of things with our pollution then we are doomed to the kind of winter we had a couple of years ago where arctic air hung heavily over Britain seemingly for months on end.

Welcome to global warming.

[Bill W (2)]

Welcome to global warming.

The answer, apparently, according to friends of the earth or somesuch, is wind turbines. Because despite being ugly, noisy, uneconomic monstosities the lift the ground temperature by half a degree!

I still wish to know why, when my back lane resembles a river, and the water table is 1/2 inch (just over a centimeter) higher than my paddock, do I have a hosepipe ban because of a water shortage?

Presumab;ly if I stuck my pump in the ditch (which is overflowing, hence the lane being a river) it would be OK to attach that to a hosepipe (why would I want to water the garden anyway - it is soaking wet!!)

To wash the car??? Ho, ho, ho ho ho!!! Last time I washed the Jeep was in 2002 when I got it all muddy driving across a ploughed field!

[Old Hob]

OK - now the real and boring answer. The rain was needed in the winter when vegetation is low and the ground is cool and damp. This would have meant that the water was absorbed rapidly and went into the deep aquifers. The first lot(s) of torrential rain fell on hard ground and ran off uselessly into the rivers and the sea little of it being collected. In addition, there is now vegetation (ie trees in blossom/leaf, grass and other plants) that absorbs and then evaporates the moisture.
The good news is that there is so much rain that the ground is now cool and moist so the water will go into the "right" places. It's just that the first lot "missed". It really shows that in such a crowded island the infrastructure is fragile.

[Kinoulton]

OK - now the real and boring answer.

That's not a boring answer at all, very informative.

I also understand that concreting huge areas of our land doesn't help either, as rain water used to soak into land, whereas now it just runs across concrete until it gets to the lowest point avaialble and then starts backing up.