"Tudor Hughes" wrote in message
...
On Jun 5, 8:00 pm, "Will Hand" wrote:
"Paul Hyett" wrote in message

...





On Sun, 5 Jun 2011 at 16:21:31, Will Hand
wrote in uk.sci.weather :

"Hugh Newbury" wrote in message
...

Only 0.6mm here today. I didn't bother watering this morning because I
was expecting a decent amount.

Well I did say not to expect too much in the already dry areas as the
dry
ground would not provide enough moisture!

I always thought rain usually fell from the *sky*...
--
Paul Hyett, Cheltenham (change 'invalid83261' to 'blueyonder' to email
me)

As I said the other day, in order to get substantial showers (in the
absence
of upper forcing) you need a moisture supply from low down. A bone dry
ground mitigates against showers, doesn't stop them, although in very arid
deserts it does where convection is of the dry thermal type.

Will
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In the last 8 hours about 21 mm has fallen on bone-dry brown-
grassed north-east Surrey. This forces me to conclude that the
moisture is of non-Surrey origin as it nearly always is when it rains
here. I suspect a large part of it comes from evaporation of the
oceans and that the hydrological cycle is on rather larger a scale
than has been suggested, but who knows?

Tudor Hughes, Warlingham, Surrey.
===============

No need for sarcasm Tudor! I did say that in the absence of any other
forcing dry ground would mitigate rainfall amounts. Clearly there has been
convergence over your and other areas, possibly induced by outflow from the
storms on the adjacent continent. It was not a classic front rather a
convergence zone clearly shown by how the radar echoes behaved becoming
clustered.

Will
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