Friday 6th February
There is no difference, the low-pressure systems continue to be driven across the Atlantic arriving over the UK and then stalling against the resident anticyclone to the east, before heading north. Thursday was a typical day under thick cloud all day and almost continuous rain. The automatic rain gauge record showed that rain had fallen during every hour over the past-twenty-four hours amounting to 19.4mm, which took the monthly total to 42.8mm, already 57% of my 42-year February record after just five days in the month.
There was little variation in the temperature all day and through the night having started at 5.8C, rose to a peak of 8.0C at 15.04 and then hovered around that temperature all night. Thus a diurnal range of just 2.2C.
After first light on Friday, there wasn’t much light, under dull and gloomy conditions, as the rain continued to fall. The rain will be persistent for much of the morning and ease during the afternoon. The mild, cloudy conditions are forecast to continue well into next week with no severe weather foreseen at this time.
Marlborough has endured 224mm of precipitation since the start of the new year. Both the River Og and River Kennet are running high although still below the top of the normal range, rising very little over the past four days. The River Kennet is still 0.2m below the top of its normal image and the River Og 0.4m below the top of its normal range. The answer can be found when looking at the record of ground water in the local Thames Water catchment area. We have just survived a very hot and dry summer when there were water restrictions under drought conditions, as a result the level of water in the aquifers dropped significantly. During the past five days the water level at the borehole just to the south of Marlborough has risen almost 1m a day and is still 2m below the top of the normal range. Whilst the borehole to the north of Marlborough has been rising at a lower rate of almost 0.2m each day and is also approximately 2m below the top of its normal image.
Whatever the summer brings in terms of rainfall, at least the local aquifers are filling, though some way to go before full. The water meadows have been filling up for the past three days or so. There is a rule of thumb that much of the rainfall that falls after from April and into the summer, evaporates into the atmosphere, thus little percolates into the ground.