Category Archives: Weather

Xmas at Dumblehole

A quick Xmas update. The fields are too wet to move anything with the tractor unless we want to ruin them. So we are taking hay to the sheep by barrow. Unfortunately we are on clay here so certain areas are now ponds and I have to steer the wheelbarrow through 1/2 a foot of water and the sheep have made a real mess round the hay feeders. But they are at least in a field that’s dry. The pigs however are loving it! Soft earth and it’s so warm they are finding lots to eat.

And because it’s so warm there are Iris and Aconites flowering (normally Feb) and we are having a home grown cauliflower. This photo shows what I picked from the poly tunnel today to go with our Sasso cock bird for dinner: The cauliflower was planted in August to overwinter and eat in early spring but like everything else as it’s so warm they have flowered early. The bad news is we won’t have any  in March.

Merry Christmas to all our followers.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Xmas veggie basket

 

 

 

 

 

 

First Frost means Autumn is here

25th October and we had our first frost which is a good excuse, as if I needed one,  to post an Autumnal dawn. However the main reason for posting though is that’s it’s analogous to my feelings about the local squirrel population.

Let me explain,  the tree in the foreground is a Walnut which had an abundant crop of walnuts this year, more than enough for man and squirrel. However the local grey squirrels saw it differently and stripped the tree bear, there’s not a single walnut left. All of  which made me see red aka why the photo fits! I’m already scheming on how I’ll stop them next year.

2014 Weather Stats

A few weather statistics from 2014. I’m not sure how useful they are but it’s interesting, well to me at least. We have a Maplin weather station in one of the fields which records wi2014-12-31nd, temperature, pressure and rainfall. The data is processed on a Raspberry Pi using an application called Weewx, which crunches the data and publishes it to Wunderground every 5 minutes.

2014 was a mild winter and hot summer,  July was the hottest month with 3 days over 30°C and another 15 over 25°C.  June and September also had  9 and 8 days respectively over 25°C. As for cold we only had 2 days where the minimum temperature was below -5°C and they were both this December.

Rain: Overall 719mm, just over 24 inches in old money. The beginning of the year was very wet (Jan 120mm , Feb 98mm). The sheep weren’OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAt impressed and looked thoroughly miserable. Our lambing shed had 3 inches of water in it a month before lambing!
September was the driest with just 4.8mmOLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA which was just as well as August was miserable, 90mm.

The wind is almost always from the SW, ranging from SSW  to WSW. Sept (SE) and Nov (NW) were the exception. In general Dumblehole is not a windy place however there were 14 days where the wind exceeded 25 knots. As you’d expect the winter months were the windiest, February topped the polls with strongest wind at 34.4 knots and on 5 days the wind exceeded 25 knots. June and September were the calmest.

Sunrise

We’ve had some cracking sunrises and sunsets over the last couple weeks. I don’t think my snap does them justice.

It’s starting to feel like Winter with the temperature getting below zero. The taps in the fields have frozen a couple times so far. If you want to build a stalagmite like mine,  then don’t quite turn the tap off overnight.

2014-12-ice