Amid all the rain, our only defence is a good moan
It has been one of those weeks that makes one realise how quickly the exceptional becomes normal.
Rain again and again, and yet again. In my neck of the woods, we’ve had more than 70mm this week and counting – and who knows what fresh downpours tonight will bring?
To put that figure into context, between 1981 and 2010 the average monthly rainfall for June was 73.4mm. Of course, that was before the fateful summer of 2012 when an average of 149mm fell in June alone.
This week has borne witness to similar scenes of devastation to seven years ago. In the Lincolnshire town of Wainfleet All Saints, for example, a major incident has been declared and some 70 homes evacuated following two months’ rain in two days. RAF Chinooks continue to drop ballast to try to repair the breached banks of the nearby River Steeping.
Rails and roads have also been disrupted with 500 passengers in the Midlands stranded on board for eight hours on Thursday afternoon due to a train being halted by a landslip.
What will this weekend bring? Well there’s rain, of course, and a great deal more of it as a soggy stain of low pressure seeps slowly westwards.
But all is not lost, as in between the downpours, one may glean the merest glimpses of sunshine. Into next week, the weather is even warming up, although for most of us things are still looking pretty grim.
What to do when the weather is so foul in June is a conundrum I am yet to solve. Gardening is a write-off, so too a cycle ride or country walk. I’ve even abandoned plans to boil up some elderflower cordial this weekend as the stems apparently need to be dry before they are picked. There is one thing left to do, however, in this dismal holding pattern of a summer. A good old moan about the weather is always the first and last line of defence.