Review of Summer 09 Weatherwise

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Hello, well this is my first blog and its theme will focus on the weather of Summer 2009 in my locality. As well as being a keen gardener I keep my own weather records courtesy of an Automatic Weather Station which uploads to the web most days at www.weatherwise.org.uk

Summer 2009 was forecast to be warmer and drier than normal by the UK Met Office, it ended up being ever so slightly warmer than normal but in most places away from SE England wetter than normal. It was, as predicted, an improvement on 2007 and 2008 in almost all places.

In Bedford the mean temperature for Summer 2009 was 17.2C, warmer than last summer and 0.7C warmer than 2007 but 2.0C cooler than 2006, which was one of the warmest summers of the last 50 years.

June began quite warm with the first days of the year which exceeded 25C. It quickly turned much cooler and unsettled though with some big falls of rain, on the 10th 26.9mm of rain fell courtesy of thunderstorms. Things settled down a bit in the middle part of the month, with under 5mm of rain falling in the following two weeks, again though it broke down as some unsettled but very warm air heralded a heatwave. unusually the hot weather began rather than finished with thunderstorms – 28.4mm of rain fell on the 26th, in the most intense rainfall I think I’ve witnessed here (the rainfall rate was up to 125mm/hr). Come the last day of the month the temperature reached 30C for the first time in 3 years. Full June Stats

July was hot for the first few days but there after it was very unsettled and cool, it ended up the wettest July since I moved here (1996) and with 18 days of rainfall it wasn’t just down to a few heavy downpours. Temperatures were depressed with 25C not reached after the 4th. Full July Stats

August began unsettled. 40mm of rain fell almost incessantly from lunchtime on the 6th until daybreak on the 7th, making the 6th the 2nd wettest calendar day on my 13-year records. After this though less than 10mm of rain fell in the last 3 weeks of summer, meaning the watering can was out every day! Temperatures began to lift too with 25C reached on a couple of days, this was better than last August when temperatures did not reach 25C at all. Full August Stats

Notes on plants

April was too early to plant out the courgettes – although we had no frost the abscence of warm weather was the cuplrit, plants I planted out in mid-May were much more succesful.
Outdoor tomatoes have not ripened by the end of the summer! My ‘Marmande’ has 1 (huge) reddening tomato but the rest are still green, I bought these as small plants in May from a hardware store, next year I will sow from seed nice and early but not plant out til’ late May and hopefully harvest in August, before the Autumn storms set in (one is predicted for next week)
I purchased my Osteospermum plants in early May and they were already in flower, its the usual trick – they were forced to flower early and it was actually still too cold for them – all the new flower buds fell off and we saw no more flowers until late July. This year I have taken some cuttings from the plant, they’ve already rooted and I will be looking after these overwinter for planting out in late May.
Not summer news but ‘today’ news: I’ve just received 2 mini grow beds for my birthday and I plan to plant garlic in one of these around November, the other one I will keep packed up until Spring.

• 1 Sep, 2009
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