Happy New Year to you all. I hope 2022 is a much better year for you all than was 2021. The year started with temperatures more reminiscent of autumn than winter, though they aren’t going to last very long. It also felt as if we had experienced an awful lot of rain over the last week, but that just goes to show that when it comes to weather, we can’t trust our perceptions that much.
So there you have it. Although water levels have increased over the week and that rate is accelerating, the water levels in the Tilshead borehole increased by less than 1 metre throughout the course of December. Compare the current (red) line with the flood year (black) and you will see that we have experienced filling rates nearly 100-times greater; around 3.3 metres a day. We are sitting some 4 metres below average for a 2nd of January reading and over 9 metres below the selected flood year. However, that doesn’t mean this year is exceptional. In fact, in 4 of the last 8 years (2015/16; 2016/17; 2017/18 and 2018/19), the 2nd January levels have been below those of today. What we can say is that in none of those 4 years did the aquifer reach groundwater flood levels.
The weather for January might now be described as pretty much what you might expect for Winterbourne Stoke in winter: temperatures largely at, or, slightly above average, weather systems rolling in from the Altlantic and the weather being a mix of wet and dry with some sunny or dull days. There may be a few brief extra cold snaps, but the threat of snow is mainly to the hills of the north.