Our green and pleasant land has turned yellow!
FAREWELL England’s green and pleasant land … until it rains again, anyway.
After weeks with barely a drop of rain, normally verdant parks, gardens and countryside are now brown and yellow – and the parched earth is even visible from space.
Contrasting images of the country were published by the Met Office yesterday, as forecasters predicted the heatwave would continue for up to another month. The satellite early May photographs to mid- July, show with the central, change southern from and eastern England looking particularly parched in the second image.
But a brief respite may be on the way, with heavy thunderstorms set to bring as much as an inch of rain in an hour to many areas of England tomorrow.
Dorset, one of the areas where the storms are forecast, has received just 2.2mm (0.08 inches) so far this month, when its normal July average is 54.4mm (2.1 ins).
The Met Office said the UK as a whole has received an average of just 47mm of rain (nearly two inches) so far this summer, from June 1 to July 16, making it the driest start to summer in modern records which date back to 1961.
But the deluge could be followed by yet more warm and dry weather for up to another month, forecasters say.
The Met Office predicts that thunder will hit the Midlands, the South and East Anglia between 2pm and midnight tomorrow. Rachael West, a Met Office spokesman, said: ‘The showers are likely to be very heavy but will hit isolated areas while other places nearby could be completely dry. ‘Otherwise, apart from some light and patchy rain in North Wales on Friday and on further occasions into the coming weeks, the country is likely to remain mostly dry over the coming weeks. ‘In those warm and settled conditions, temperatures are again set to be quite high and potentially rise into the 30s (celsius) at times.’ The Met Office said the heatwave is caused by an area of high pressure held in place due to the current positioning of the Atlantic jetstream.