Has 2014 been a very wet year?

What do you think? Here is some statistics from a weather station pretty close to where I live: http://www.ewwa.net/wx/wxraindetail.php

Here is some pictures of my garden from the weekend (after 40mm of rain in 9 days):





I'm just concerned that this is what it's going to be like for years to come...so some honest answers please!

 

Blimey Nick

Certainly last winter was the wettest since 1776. But like John said, we had a long dry patch.

 

Comparing http://www.ewwa.net/wx/wxraindetail.php Figure to date is 541mm. With the annual average is 642 mm (25.3 in) http://www.kingston-upon-hull.climatemps.com/precipitation.php . So not excessively wet yet.
Plymouth so far has had 841.9mm to date http://www.bearsbythesea.co.uk/
Flooding is probably more related to the rainfall rate compared to the rate at which it drains rather than the total annual rainfall.

 

Would you fancy growing rice???

 

My garden was the same this last weekend nFrost it usually does get that bad around March time but not normally at this time of the year .I've had to empty my water butts a couple of times over the last few weeks because of them over flowing

 

gosh thats a lot of water!

 

Thanks for the info all! It would appear the previous YTDs for rainfall for the last years were:

2011 - 474mm
2012 - 706mm!
2013 - 359mm
2014 - 541mm (so far)

So I guess it's up there. My plan was to spike the full garden with a garden fork and rake it some sand (which type?) and get hold of a hollow-tine aerator on the cheap. My old man has suggesting raising the middle part of the lawn but not sure about that.

There's something else that might help - the drainpipe for the front of the house goes straight into a water butt and then that overflows, the excess doesn't go into a drain. Some of my neighbours have three houses that go into one drain via one drainpipe. Mine just goes into the ground/the gardens. Does anyone know where these drains might go? Is it carried away or do you think they all go into a soak away of some sort? Long shot I know but you lot have a lot of experience beyond my own!

 

Thanks John. Strangely enough the garden isn't heavy clay, it's dark and crumbly for the most part - decades of cultivation may have something to do with that. The house is roughly 100 years old so I'm tempted to assume it might be going to a land drain but I'll check my water bill to see if that can shed any light on it. Just to complicate matters there's a water pumping station at the end of the road so maybe the ground is naturally wet like this.

 

Hi Nfrost , where do you get yourr annual rainfall from ? I can only find figures for my area 958mm (2002 ) and the met office average table of 836mm (1981-2010 ). Both are a lot higher than yours.
We have not had very much rain in thepast three weeks , just one heavy downpour last Friday.

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/public/weather/climate/gcw0g75sw

 

I think it has been wetter more often than previous years in Battle ( 5 years now) and my tomatoes succumbed to blight in late August after a spell of heavy COLD rain and I think we are due to break records down here,
Jenny

 

Too far North