Shanna's 2020 Rainfall Report
Do you have a rain gauge in your garden?
Measuring rainfall feels like a family tradition to me - my parents have always kept a rain gauge in their garden, and they can remember them in their parents’ and grandparents’ gardens. This is mine:
I started recording rainfall in our garden last year and now have two year’s worth of records (see the summary bar chart below). We can’t really get a lot of info from these data but I think the main takeaway is that the past two years have had dry spring and summer months and were wetter in the fall and winter.
How does this help me?
We live close to Wales, one of the wettest areas of the UK, but we don’t necessarily get the same amount of rainfall and showers often miss us. So I want to know how much rain is actually falling on our garden each month.
Knowing when to expect dry weather helps me plan when to plant and ensure I have irrigation and mulch in place. Knowing my winters are wet, I can make informed choices about plants that may be prone to winter rotting based on whether I think they’ll survive in my garden.
What about global warming - how much are we expecting rainfall to change in the future?
Experts are predicting wetter winters and drier summers for the UK with “extreme weather events such as heatwaves and heavy downpours becom(ing) more frequent and more intense” (source).
So, even if the total rain fall in the summer increases, it may only fall during 1 or 2 heavy showers in a month, which means we still need to be smart about how we grow our gardens during the dry spells in between and how we use and conserve water. (The BBC offers a look-up tool to see how climate change will affect your area of the UK - go here to check it out).
Be sure to join me again next January for my 2021 rain report!
