Welcome to the last flood bulletin of the 2022-2023 season. I’ve barely been in the village for the last month for a couple of reasons, but I have been monitoring things daily, just in case there was a rapid reversal in the way the aquifer was behaving. But with little rainfall since the start of the year, and spring well underway, there was little chance of that happening. The graph of the water levels in the aquifer now looks like this:
As you can see, the water level in the aquifer stands at 92.05 metres AOD and is well below average. We saw earlier in the year that average values can sometimes be deceptive due to a few extreme events like the prolonged flood year of 2012-2014. If we look at the last decade of water levels on the 26th of March, it looks like this:
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As you can see, today is the fourth lowest level we have seen on this date. So, in the space of a month, we have gone from a flood situation to one where there is the possibility of drought later in the year. Of course, we are moving towards April, a frequently fickle month when it comes to rain, so the situation could still be reversed and bring levels back towards the average. However, as trees come into leaf and fields, lawns and gardens begin to grow, that becomes less likely day by day.
The weather over the next few days is likely to be increasingly unsettled. Today starts damp, but gets brighter and dryer later, but we will have showers all through the week into the start of April. The following week is likely to follow a similar pattern with a mixture of showers interspersed with drier spells. Although later in the month we are likely to see more settled weather across the country, the wettest conditions are likely to be here in the south of the country. Temperatures are going to be fairly close to average throughout the period.
Have a great summer and I hope to return with the flood bulletins in November.