Rain does little but dampen down the dust

DUST... it’s the dominant feature of the countryside on my morning dog walks at the moment, although briefly yesterday it was being held in place by something far less prevalent of late – rain.

I headed off for the morning constitutional with the spaniel under heavy cloud cover. Roughly halfway round the hike, it did actually start to rain... heavy drops, but not many of them and they served only to dampen down the dust.

It is going to take a lot more rain to turn the brown grass back to green and perk up the trees. Already, several are beginning to lose their leaves in the garden, with one large and overgrown bay tree on the bank outside the kitchen looking very much the worse for wear and shedding brown and yellow leaves like confetti.

Trees, especially those that are well established, are pretty resilient to drought, with deep roots that manage to find enough moisture deep below ground. Many of the oak and ash trees here, that are holding up against diseases like ash dieback, will have survived very dry summers before. But young trees that are just getting established might struggle – which will be a worry for all those keen tree planters doing their bit to meet targets set by the Government to boost tree numbers.

Also worried during this prolonged dry spell are the farmers. Those growing cereal crops have mostly got the grain in the barn by now and the straw baled and stored under cover – a bit of heavy rain and a thunderstorm won’t worry them too much.

But livestock farmers already digging into their supplies of hay and silage, intended to see them through winter, will be counting the cost in a month or so if we don’t get a wet spell to start everything off again.

You can’t order the weather you would like, but if you could I reckon a few nights of gentle rain – falling in the hours of darkness, so as not to mess up the summer holidays, and falling gently enough to soften up the ground – are what is needed.

Instead, for some parts of the country yesterday, the heatwave ended with a deluge. Where once things were parched, by last night they were sodden – or even completely under water.

The speed at which a heavy burst of rainfall can run off land baked hard by weeks of sunshine is remarkable.

The impact – as we have seen – can be devastating, with floods a risk whenever the skies open and the rain comes down.

Hereabouts, however, at time of writing, it is still mostly dust.