"Jonathan Stott" wrote in message
...
I've just returned from 4.5 weeks away in Cyprus, Egypt and America.
It's good to be back! I will sort out the June stats for Canterbury's
weather when I get back to Canterbury at the weekend but from what I can
see it looks like it was another dry month. What are the drought
conditions like in the south-east now?

America was great. We were in Mount Rainier (which is apparently the
"snowiest" place in the world) where there was still a good 3 feet of
snow. I measured an overnight low of 2.7C at St. Mary at the east
entrance of Glacier National Park in Montana on the night of the 22nd
June. In Baker, California, the temperature (according to the world's
tallest thermometer) was 113F (some 46C) - plenty hot enough! It rained
pretty much every day - we were caught in a torrential thunderstorm at
the Grand Canyon just after we had returned from a walk to Cedar Ridge
on the South Kaibab Trail. Lightning, especially at the rim of the
Canyon, is one of the main risks at the Grand Canyon.

It was interesting to note that although serious drought conditions
prevail across much of the area that I visited, there's still plenty of
water to keep grass green and to irrigate golf courses and stuff. The
area around the reservoir of Lake Powell in southern Utah is in the
fifth year of a serious drought but there's still plenty of water to
keep the golf courses nice and green!

It rained in Las Vegas again! The last time I was there it rained too. I
think the average monthly rainfall for the city in June is something
like 5mm - we must have had that on the day that we were there! Luckily
it was so hot that 15 minutes after the shower everything was hot, dry
and sunny again and you wouldn't have known that it had been raining!

It's been hard to keep up with the weather in the UK. I did see in the
USA Today paper that there had been severe thunderstorms in London at
some point a couple of weeks ago and I notice that it had been hot in
Canterbury (31.0C on the 2nd July. The 73.3C that seems to have been
recorded on the 28th June must be erroneous! Also, the updates on my
website seem to be stuck on the 6th July - I will fix that this weekend
when I finally return to Canterbury.

I have quite a lot of photos to sort through (nearly 2000) which I hope
to work through over the next few days.

Jonathan
Canterbury, Kent
http://www.canterburyweather.co.uk/

14mm here in June, Jonathan, which is often similar to you. There have been
some heavy downpours which mainly just missed here and I think you may have
caught one or two. Put it this way - I bet your grass isn't very green!

Dave, S.Essex