SUMMER 2006 - part 3: The drought starts to bite....

BACK TO WEATHER-BLOG MENU

New! Fine Art Prints & digital images for sale-
Welsh Weather & Dyfi Valley landscapes Slide-Library - Click HERE

Well we're now at mid-August and the great heat may have subsided, but there has been hardly any significant rain, let alone storms! So I'm feeling somewhat deprived, which I suppose is a whole lot better than feeling somewhat depraved! But there's always something of interest in the Mid-Wales landscape, and this page sees me out and about with the camera to do exactly that! Before continuing I'd just like to express my thanks for the many emails I have received in recent times, from people all over the world, who have found this site. I'm glad it gives you as much pleasure to read it as it does to me to run the thing - even when there's nothing very spectacular going on overhead! I get a certain amount of solace, in a world seemingly torn by war and bitterly divided one way and another, in contemplating the vast depths of the skies. Something more people ought to do - it might calm them down a bit! Gotta be better than shooting and bombing, I would imagine...
One evening in late July I ventured down to Borth, to see if any noctilucent clouds might appear after sundown (there had been a display the night before which sadly I was unable to photograph). Got a nice sunset instead - without the "green flash" as the sun sank over the horizon, but it was peaceful enough watching it sink over the islands and disappear...
The twilight glow was particularly strong that evening.....
This was one evening in late July too - a burst of crepuscular rays from behind a bank of convective cloud.....
High summer in Mid-Wales is a good time to get out into the wilds. The hillsides are a blaze of colour as you follow narrow winding pathways through the expanses of bell-heather and bilberry..
On the same day (near Ystumtuen): a farmer was ploughing a small field - enough to attract predators and scavengers looking for worms, grubs, mice etc. First one kite appeared....
...then two...
...then three! A rare sight to see one when I first arrived in the area in 1981, sights like this are not that uncommon now. The story of the red kite is one of the really big successes in conservation in recent times.
But the big theme is summer has to be lack of rainfall. The very dry winter, followed by a brief wet spell through May, gave way to the heatwaves of Midsummer and beyond. The drought is now taking its toll. Here is Nant-y-moch reservoir in early August. This whole arm of the lake is dry, where normally 10-20ft of water would be expected....
The peat forming its bed (it was formerly a boggy upland valley) has dried out and cracked. Damper, less cracked peat in the background marks the centre of the lake-bed. Nant-y-moch is used for hydro-electricity, so some of the drop in water could be explained if demand had been high. A bit odd though during a heatwave, unless everyone switching their air-conditioning on at once caused abnormal demand!
It makes an interesting subject for the camera though. I've only included a few images because they are rather large files even at high JPEG compression. This is the centre of this part of the lake, with just a trickle of water running along. When we hear of drought restrictions, we normally turn our minds immediately to SE England, leaking pipes, depleted aquifers and hosepipe bans. However, in these traditionally wet Welsh uplands, it has been biting. I have several friends who rely on springs for their water. Most have failed. In some cases this is the first time since 1976 that this has happened. Some farmers have had to cut gaps in fences to let stock get to streams. This, then is serious stuff. With a blocking high-pressure in the Eastern North Atlantic, depressions are running well to the north of the UK, with attendant frontal rainbands decaying as they move SE across the country. So although we have had some rain in the last few days, we desperately need more. It is hoped by everyone who lives in rural areas that the rest of August will deliver - a shame for the visitors but then - if you've got nothing coming out of your taps, other priorities come into play....
Finally, back at the coast, this time at Tonfanau, where Afon Dysynni flows out into Cardigan Bay and the normally lush coastal vegetation is frazzled to a desert-brown. Brackish lagoons behind the great storm-beach have virtually dried to nothing....
The vegetation features plants that can cope with the harsh environment here - very exposed all year round and sometimes arid in dry summers. Various succulent species are met with - plus this - Sea Holly with its bluish-green spiky leaves and heads of blue flowers, with a Common Blue butterfly sharing a feed on one flowerhead with a small species of wasp. Lots here for the serious macro photographer (which I'm not)....
And finally - the rains came - with a vengeance! More on the next page HERE.
BACK TO WEATHER-BLOG MENU New! Fine Art Prints & digital images for sale- Welsh Weather & Dyfi Valley landscapes Slide-Library - Click HERE