September 30th, 2024

Hi All,

A short blog this week as I am off to meet 'The Blond Assassin' at Nottingham City Hospital for a spot of shoulder work this afternoon and I've been flat out this morning sorting software report updates before September passes us by.

The topsy-turvy weather picture for September continues as I felt to my displeasure whilst enduring a very cold, overnight session on the beautiful River Trent. Watching the dew form on the inside of my bivvy shelter and then turn to frost at dawn chilled me right to the bone. That said, when it looks as beautiful and tranquil as this, I can't complain.

Fast forward to today the rain continues to fall and looking at our annual rainfall data for Market Harborough it paints a grim picture ;

2022 - 597.2mm

2023 - 899.4mm

2024 - 852mm to date

Looking at The Met Office's data using a 'local weather station', the annual average is 649.16mm for this area.

I see and read this a lot in the local news, you know the thing "The Met Office reports that 'x' amount of rainfall fell over 'y' locally". Well in our case (Market Harborough) the nearest Met Office climate station is in Moulton, Northamptonshire, some 19 miles away. In other words from a rainfall perspective, the data is totally irrelevant. When we experienced our recent storm, some wag on the local council quoted the Met Office as reporting 66mm of rainfall fell over 96 hours, when the actual data measured by a local Davis weather station was 166mm !

So the moral of this story is, check where your local Met Office weather station is location-wise before you quote the data or being slightly cheeky, get your own weather station :)

Rainfall is so specific locally that you need relevant data and I know they'll be people reading this that have had substantially more (west / south west / north west) and substantially less rainfall in terms of year to date.

So far this month as you can see from the we are on 262.9mm for the month and I can honestly say I have never seen so much water in the fields at this time of year. The River Welland broke its banks as did many of its local tributaries and farmers fields are waterlogged with crops of Potatoes and Maize still unharvested. Let us hope we get some respite because those guys have already endured a very hard year last year.

So without further ado let's look at this week's weather picture...

General weather - w/c 30th September, 2024

So the synopsis for this week shows a deep low pressure system sitting slap bang across the bottom of the U.K (we must be in the eye of it because the trees are hardly moving here ?). This low will slowly move eastwards and as it does so its trailing edge will pull down northerly winds trending to north easterly later in the week as a ridge of high pressure (hurrah!) pushes it towards Central Europe.

So the beginning of the week will be wet as you have no doubt discovered but as we transgress past Tuesday into Wednesday, the weather picture trends towards drier and brighter and more settled weather. Later in the week, as the high pressure moves eastwards, its trailing edge will pull up milder, southerly winds by the end of the week.

Now although that normally means drier, warm and settled, for Ireland, the end of the week will turn wetter because a weak Atlantic low pressure will introduce moisture to that southerly airstream, so here it'll both be very warm (18-20°C) for the time of year but also wet and of course humid.

For the U.K, we will start to see this moisture and humidity feed in over the weekend with a mild southerly airstream, temperatures in the mid-teens (14-16°C) but an increasing number of showers complicating the weather picture.

By the end of the weekend, Ireland will be picking up appreciable rain courtesy of a deep Atlantic low pressure system whilst the U.K is still protected somewhat by that ridge of high pressure. In other words, finely-balanced coming into next week.

Weather Outlook - w/c 7th October, 2024

So as previously commented we start next week with a finely-balanced weather situation, low pressure to the south west of Ireland, high pressure to the east sitting over the continent. So next Monday I see as wet for Ireland and the west of the U.K, with showers for many central areas as well. As we progress through the 1st part of next week, the Atlantic low pressure moves slowly eastwards and so we will see unsettled conditions spreading eastwards to all areas, buoyed by a south westerly wind. The low pressure is projected to move across Ireland so always wetter in the west as it stands now.

As we approach mid-week, next week, that low pressure fizzles out but another very deep low pressure is projected to vector up from the south west Atlantic to replace it.

This looks quite a serious storm system to me with very tightly-packed isobars, so that means very windy and maybe it'll be a named system. The other thing that slightly bothers me is its tracking up from the south across the very warm Bay of Biscay. Now I have spoken about this before, the potential for a storm system tracking up from the south to gather energy and bring more significant rainfall and in this case winds as well.

As the snippet above shows for Friday 11th October from tropicaltidbits.com, the isobars are very tightly packed so I take that to read gale force winds likely to cause damage together with localised flooding possibly. Currently Ireland is in the firing line directly but the storm track may change as we go through next week. One to keep an eye on for sure.

Agronomic Notes

Now I am working against the clock today as mentioned above so this will be brief.

I will concentrate on disease pressure because I know that is front and centre to many end-users concerns going into October as we do tomorrow.

As predicted last week with the cooler end to the week / weekend, the disease pressure models have backed off significantly as can be seen from both Smith Kern's graphs above. Now looking ahead, my concern is focussed on the 2nd part of this week where high pressure pushes in and vectors southerly winds for the end of the week / weekend. The combination (shown below) of high pressure, southerly winds and a nearby low pressure adding moisture / humidity to the weather picture sets the scene for high disease pressure at the end of the week and over the weekend. This will be particularly the case across Ireland because it is currently forecast to be warmer than the U.K.

So my hunch is for an increase in disease pressure running into the end of this week before dropping back as that deep, intense low pressure pushes in early next week.

Thankfully if you are looking to apply hardeners or the like, the high pressure system that builds from late Tuesday onwards should provide a good opportunity spray window-wise.

OK, short and sweet.

All the best.

Mark Hunt