2012 – a rather wet year.
by Lewis, 8 January, 2013, 7 comments
It has been a rather strange year. After another dry winter – March arrived and was one of the warmest and driest on record; consequently, many of us were threatened with restrictions (on hosepipes etc) as a severe drought threatened - many reservoirs were very low on water.
But then came April, which was one of the wettest recorded in the UK. Some 121.8 mm of rain fell, beating the previous record of 120.3 mm -which was set in 2000; some parts of the U.K. had three times the ‘normal’ amount of rainfall. June was also very wet and set a record. There then followed the wettest summer as a whole since 1912. The final rainfall figures for the year have been released and the total rainfall for the UK during 2012 was 1,330.7 mm (52.4in), just 6.6mm short of the record set in 2000.
The big winners in these wet conditions were slugs – including the giant Spanish super slug, or Spanish stealth slug that was reported to be invading gardens. These have an ‘enhanced’ breeding cycle producing many more eggs Read more...
