"jbm" wrote in message ...
I am absolutely and thoroughly stuck on something the local council has
asked me to look into.

Over the last seven years, the rainfall in this area has been well below
normal for 5 of them. Currently, we are over 300mm short of what we would
normally have expected in that time. Doesn't sound a lot, but it
represents 6 months of normal rainfall.

In 2011 we had just under 400mm, 60% of normal, and the following year,
despite numerous thunderstorms, deluges and flood alerts along the River
Nene, several springs in the area dried up, and have not flowed since.
Result = steams with no water in them, local lakes well below level, with
any pollution entering them not being diluted sufficiently not to cause
problems. One lake lost all its waterfowl in July due to contamination
from fuel oil from a local industrial estate. What I have found is enough
evidence to prove that the ground water levels are severely depleted, with
the water table at least 300mm below what it was 5 years ago.

So I would appreciate it if some of you knowledgeable meteorologists out
there would care to hazard a guess at the following. Having experienced so
many dry years recently, what are the chances of getting some
exceptionally wet ones, with steady and moderate rain to start
replenishing the ground water, without the majority of it disappearing
straight into the rivers as surface run-off? What we need is a lot of
water, and I mean a lot, getting down to that water table as quickly as
possible. Any ideas anyone? We have to make a decision shortly as to what
to do with the lakes - leave them as they are, dredge out all the ****e
and see what happens, or fill them in and be done with it. And a
reasonably intelligent prediction on future rainfall might help in that
decision.

jim

a very dry and rainless Northampton

For your interest, I have listed the decade average annual rainfall for
Wokingham since 1885. The driest decade recently was 1985 to 1994, but there
is no indication of a long-term drying or wetting trend here.
Decade Annual Anomaly, compared
ending average with 1885 to 2014 average
1894
618
-29.8

1904
597
-51.4

1914
635
-13.1

1924
685
36.5

1934
623
-25.4

1944
643
-5.2

1954
665
16.9

1964
646
-2.0

1974
700
51.6

1984
671
22.4

1994
614
-33.7

2004
679
31.4

2014
668
20.0



--
Bernard Burton

Wokingham Berkshire.

Weather data and satellite images at:
http://www.woksat.info/wwp.html



---
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
http://www.avast.com