Well, two bits of good news this week. First, and ever so slightly tongue in cheek, you. will be delighted to read that the village has now drifted back east and the Environment Agency recognises that we and the River Till are located on Salisbury Plain and are no longer in West Dorset. Second, although we had a little bit of snow early in the week, it didn’t add much to the amount of water going into the Tilshead borehole and the rate of filling has slowed to a crawl in the last few days. We are 5 metres AOD above the average for this date and about two weeks away from the 1st March which is the average date we reach the maximum borehole level (though that is very variable and we’ve seen it happen at any time from early December to early April).
We are now moving into a spell of warmer, wet and windy weather. Indeed, the warmth is already here. For the first time since Monday, there is virtually no snow down the side of White Lodge in Asserton. It’s made me wonder whether that is the origin of the name, as it is one of the places the snow hangs on the longest in this area.
Now for the bad news, we are expecting rain and showers from later this morning and continuing pretty much throughout the week. The following week is likely to be a mix of showers and drier spells. Colder weather could return towards early March, but then become warmer, wetter and more unsettled weather sets in again. I suspect this week will start to define whether 2021 is a flood year or not.