Sunday 31 July 2011

Summer creatures

Just a couple of photos of some creatures that I have found in the garden this year.. two Giants!

The stag beetle was nearly 6cm long, is an endangered species and so was good to see it in May - it stayed underneath the door to the house for 2 days much to the delight of my boy!

I've not seen a stag beetle for a long time, probably a good 20 - 25 years and so I managed to resists the requests to kill it as I knew it would eventually fly away over night - this is the time it looks for food and too mate. Good old Google!!

Then came the Gaint Slug. This one was nearly 3 inches and sat there on the garden slab all morning in June.  Apparently The UK is the slug capital of the world and so this is not an endangered species. The facts say that in every cubic meter there will be 200 slugs in the UK.

The size was the rarity for me and again the requests to kill it came thick and fast. How does a 5 year old boy know that salt kills slugs?All I had was go on Dad put Salt on it... I was tempted but I never. When I came home later the slug was gone and there was no slime trial to the soil - although there was slime where it was. I did wonder if a bird took it!








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July

Well July ended up at an average temperature of 16.9 degrees. That's a nearly 3 degree drop year on year and an approx 2 degree drop on a normal July over the last 6 years.

Coldest temp recorded was 10.3 down from 11.8 degrees last year

Warmest temp recorded was 27.7 degrees down from 32.4 last year

Rain was at 39.4mm which is slightly below average and 75% of this rain was over 7 days from the 16th July.
It feels  more like May than July..Garden liked it though!


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Sunday 17 July 2011

Where's the Summer gone?

A long time since I have posted on this Blog - weather just doesn't seem that interesting at the moment but it actually is quite fancinating what is happening this year. We started off with a mild end to the winter after the cold and snow of December and now we have low temps and Rain during the summer!

Firstly the rain - this year started dry, for the months of March, April and May  I only recorded 17.8 mm of rain. June was a record month with 71mm, this is the highest I have recorded since I installed the weather station back in 2005. It's raining again today and looks like it will rain most of next week so who knows what will happen for the rest of the year. Personally I think this year will end up with near normal level of Rain.
As for Temperatures - June ended up 1.4 degrees colder this year than last year and July seems to be going the same way.

The media is full of stories of the next Ice age, which makes a change from phone hacking! The sun's activity has reduced which will mean colder weather for the UK. My stats back this up but how true is it?.. who knows!! This winter is supposed to be bleak as well and hence my sudden interested in weather again. With Winter coming I thought I would refresh my web page and I have made it more iphone friendly. This means big buttons that can accomodate fingers easy and just a cleaner more clinical look as I like that. Over the next few weeks my aim is to do the same with the other pages on the web site!

Anyway check out the new style at www.t7own.co.uk