Mark Hunt’s Weather Assessment
2nd – 9th August 2010
A familiar theme to the week as a mid-week low pressure influences the weather, bringing cool nights and a chance of rain again, especially mid-week and at the end of the week but, as usual, it's going to be hit and miss so, you may get it, you may not.
I guess the main focus is rainfall but, this week, it's worth mentioning that the cooler nights and days will take the pressure off hand-watering and lower the E.T. rates (more about them later). Currently there is a weak band of showers developing along a central strip down the A1 (Rainfall follows road systems you know) and offering the chance of rain in the afternoon. This will gradually dissipate and then we're into a dry couple of days with the only rainfall of note in south west Ireland on Tuesday morning, affecting Kerry, Clare and South Mayo and North-West Scotland on Wednesday morning. On Thursday, another frontal system should bring rain to the East of England, but whether it gets down to the South-East is debatable at this stage - hopefully it will. Further rainfall is expected Friday and Saturday, but this is likely to affect more Westerly locations.
The outlook for next week is for a high pressure to build from early in the week bringing warm / hot temperatures to the South of the U.K. and a return to high E.T. levels.
Agronomically, pretty much the same as previous weeks, with Anthracnose and Take-All prevalent, the former more as a foliar blight than the basal rot. Fairy Rings have been active now for awhile and where rainfall fell last week, I would expect both Fusarium and Red Thread to be active, though both of these can be grown out quite easily, one would hope.
In this weeks update, I've attached a summary of rainfall and E.T. figures for March - July 2006 through to 2010 so you can see just what a dry Spring it's been for most. This year is the driest Spring since I think 1929 and currently to the end of July we're running at 50% of the 30 year average, rainfall-wise. If you go to the Met Office website (U.K. and N.Ireland or Met Eireann Ireland), you can see quite clearly where the rain has fallen and where it hasn't.
(http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/anomacts) or (http://www.met.ie/climate/monthly_summarys/spring10.pdf)
I understand this doesn't apply to everyone as rainfall is a fickle friend, but hopefully it's interesting.
I've also charted Evapotranspiration (E.T.) summaries, so you can see how this relates to stress and, interestingly, each year this is increasing for the March to July period, with 2009 and 2010 the highest cumulative E.T. years. E.T. measures the loss of moisture from the grass canopy and typically you need to replace 60% of this loss to maintain good moisture status. That said though, it depends a lot on the efficiency of your irrigation system, with some systems over-watering if set at 60% E.T. In this scenario, end-users typically replace 40% of E.T. and make up the rest through hand-watering.
I'm off on my holidays next week, so hopefully this time next week, I shall be hanging on to a bodyboard instead of being strapped to my P.C.
 Summary of rainfall and E.T. figures for March - July 2006 through to 2010
Mark Hunt
Technical Director
Headland Amenity Ltd
>Weather Assessment 26th July - 2nd August 2010
>Weather Assessment 19th July - 26th July 2010
>Weather Assessment 12th July - 19th July 2010
>Weather Assessment 28th June - 5th July 2010
>Weather Assessment 2nd June - 9th June 2010
>Weather Assessment 4 - 11th Dec 2009
>Weather Assessment/Summary Spring 2009
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