The graph this week will be a great relief to some in the village, as it shows the trend in water level continues to be downwards. Indeed, the rate of drop has increased nearly 10-fold since last week.
Some villagers are confident that the 2023 flood season is over and Peter S has been bold enough to replace his duck-house back in the river near Church Street.
Of course, those who watch the graph closely will see that in the average year, there is often a second rise in levels towards the end of February and beginning of March – but 2023 hasn’t been an ‘average’ year.
An odd thing happened this week with the Tilshead borehole sensor. It went off-line for a few hours and then returned to normal.
Now sensors sometimes fail and need replacing, or power gets cut, so seeing a drop isn’t unusual. What is odd on this occasion is that sensor continued recording, so not a simple power or sensor failure, but it also dropped below the zero baseline. I don’t understand that at all.
What is the weather going to do here next week; there have been lots of mentions of rain over the last few days? Well, it will remain dry up until Wednesday with a band of rain moving into England from the Atlantic and continuing to bring rain into Thursday. After that, there may be a period of unsettled weather here, but there doesn’t seem to be any very heavy rain until the end of February. More persistent rain could move into the south of the country by the end of the first week in March but as with all weather forecasts, it may well have changed by this time next week!