Torrential rain

I'm about half way down the country and about half way between torrential and drought. Just grey, wet and gloomy.

I'm right at the bottom of the country, and already thinking about the impending drought.....mainly it's impact upon the garden. Mulch, mulch and mulch I think, before the weather gets too warm.

Also wondering about the impact of drought upon farming and the limited availability/increased cost of vegetables this coming summer. I'll try to grow more veg to compensate.

I know it's for an important reason bags, but making mud damns sounds like glorious fun!

I was entertained by the talk of transferring water from one area to another.
This would be a major engineering project that would take years and cost gazillions to build. And then to pump the water over hills. Very expensive water.
Not a quick fix for this year if ever.

They said that we might actually get some RAIN later today!!! How amazing is that?!

Mind you tomorrow is forecast to be the warmest February day on record.

I don't know what's going on. Bit worried really.

I want to be able to pepper my posts with words like "burn" and "ravine"!

It's a different world.

Weather is what's going on, jings, as in Constantly Variable British. The potential shortage of water in the south has more to do with poor storage (national problem) and more people using more (southern problem, possibly also national) than an actual lack of water.

Loving my pepper, huh?

I hop[e you're right Bags. (wrings hands with worry)

A hosepipe ban will be pain in the posterior! I suppose I had better start cultivating mediterraneum style plants. (I don't suppose that's how you spell mediterraneum. It def doesn't look right. I'm old!)

But surely it runs downhil from North to South?
It does seem weird that we can't somehow SHARE natural resources within one country.

You left out 'dead cow' jings.

I could include 'dead wood lice' in one of my posts I suppose.

I we had a dead cow!

We have Keildar Water up in the North East, which also provides water for different parts of the country, and we do get our fair share of rain up here. Its raining steady here today and blowing a hooley.

Gas and oil are already sent along pipelines around the country but water is easier to transport because it can be (and already is) transferred along existing waterways. It would still be a major undertaking and uses quite a bit of power but does mean that we wouldn't have to lay a pipeline from Baggy's house to Kent.

I think it is about time we turned this country upside down and gave us a turn of the better weather. I would be able to reach the tunnel faster too which is one of my pet hates when going on holiday.

The engineers of the nineteenth century would not have taken years to build a system for transporting water, nor would the system they devised have cost gazillions JessM. Where and when did this country go so wrong?

DH has just been up to the burn and spoiled the dam-building fun by solving the problem at source — a tree had fallen over the burn and made a dam across it (bit like a beaver's dam) so half the burn was pouring down the field instead of down the stream bed. Now we're just wondering why neighbours with the water problem hadn't done that weeks ago when the problem started .

Actually, we know why – ahem – some people's problem-solving skills are not well honed.

In short, they wanted to (did!) blame it on "climate change" (when hasn't the west of Scotland been wet? This is bog standard <puntastic> Scottish weather) instead of The Bleeding Obvious.

Did any one hear the Jeremy Vine show yesterday, the subject of water and the drought down south was discussed. On the show was a spokesman from Welsh water saying that years ago Capel Celyn in Wales was flooded to make a reservoir, Llyn Celyn, in order to supply Liverpool and The Wirral with water for industry.
Because of this he now thinks that Welsh water should charge England for any water that is "piped" into England.
Now whatever the wrongs or right of this is the thing that drew my attention was when he said Welsh water only provide water for Wales , they do not provide water for any customers in England !!!!! Well I would love to know why I have been paying my water bill to Welsh water for the last 39 years and I most certainly do not live in Wales, I live in England .
It was only yesterday that I recived a letter from them telling me that next Wednesday my water will be turned off for 7 hours while "essential" works are carried out near my house !

Gracesmum your comment about the rain running downhill to the south amused me and reminded me of a geography lesson with 10 year-olds. We were looking at a map of Europe and specifically tracing the course of the R Rhine. Several of the children assumed that the river ran south because that would be 'downhill'. They were a bit puzzled when we looked more closely and saw that it disappeared up into the Alps!

When I leave my friend's house in Switzerland,I pass a sign that tells me I am at the watershed of the Rhone, which runs West, and the Rhine, which runs East. For some reason, I always find that exciting!

Annika its probably not 'Welsh' water at all!
In the Southwest we are supplied by Wessex water which is owned by the YTL Corporation. It had been bought by Azurix ( a company affiliated to Enron) in 1998. YTL is Malaysian owned!

Much of the water supply in England is controlled by a French company, so don't annoy the French!

absent the engineers of the 19th century were fantastic but the construction projects were dangerous and paid the workers very little. Building the main sewers and the embankment in London too about 6 years and many men will have died in the process.
There was talk of water transfer over that 20-30 years but everyone knows you would have to do a great deal of digging across a great deal of land, owned by a great many people and put in some very big pipes. Because water company boundaries were drawn around river catchment areas there is inevitably a mountain, hill or at least a major bump between them.
I would be very surprised if the person on TV worked for Welsh Water. (if they did last week they may find that they don't any more!) This is a welsh nationalist beef that has been going on for decades now. They like nursing a grudge. Gets a few votes up there.
The water from that reservoir supplies the Dee which in turn supplies parts of NE Wales and Merseyside.
Reservoirs in the Elan Valley also flooded valleys. They are in the Severn catchment, run by Severn Trent and the water flows downhill to the West Midlands.

Our Water Co is now owned by a Chinese company.