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X.—On an Unusual Drought in the Lake District in 1859

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 January 2013

John Davy
John Davy
Affiliation:
Lond. & Edin., &c.
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Extract

In a former communication to the Royal Society of Edinburgh, I gave an account of an unusual fall of rain in the Lake District in the month of January last year. That occurrence was followed by its opposite in May, June, and July; not for a long period, not since 1826, has the district suffered more from want of water than in those months.

This drought is best shown by the following table, in which will be found the rain-fall for the several months of the year at five different places, only a few miles remote from each other. The table will also show the remarkable contrast as to excess and deficiency of rain during the period. It may be premised, that at Ambleside, where the drought appears to have been felt as much as anywhere, the ordinary fall of rain for the months in question is about three times as great; thus for May (our driest month of the twelve), taking the average of the preceding eleven years, it is 2·37 inches, for June 4·22 inches, for July 5·27 inches, making a total of 12·36 inches, against 4·54 inches of the months of drought.

Type
Research Article
Information
Earth and Environmental Science Transactions of The Royal Society of Edinburgh , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , 1861 , pp. 313 - 318
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Society of Edinburgh 1861

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References

page 315 note * The common mushroom, Agaricus campestris, was so abundant, that in the Lancaster market it was sold at a penny a quart, about four or five times cheaper than usual: it was met with, too, in places where, it is said, it had never before been found. Of wild flowering plants, the common harebell, Campanula rotundifolia, was unusually plentiful, and in many spots where I had never seen it before.

page 316 note * Mr Samuel Marshall, in his summary of Meteorological observations for this month, remarks, ‘On the morning of the 21st October we had the first frost this season, and on the following one the first snow, and the next a heavier fall still. The thermometer has not been below the freezing point since the 9th May till the 21st October, or more than five months.’ A very unusual degree of cold, about the same time, was observed elsewhere. Mr Lowe in a note of the 23d of October, from Highfield House Observatory, headed ‘Great Cold,’ published in the Evening Mail, says, ‘It is scarcely three weeks since I had to announce a degree of heat greater than had been known to have occurred in October (viz., 77°·5), and now the same has to be said with regard to the intense cold of the past two nights. Yesterday the minimum temperature was 23°·5, and this morning it fell to 22°·4; previously 24°·6 was the greatest cold that had been registered here.’ It was curious to observe the aspect of plants at this time;—the foliage of many trees, such as the sycamore and the ash, their leaves still green, were shrivelled and curled by the frost, so that their under surface was conspicuous, whilst the roses, the China variety still in flower, were weighed down by snow. The effect of the severity of the winter as to cold was not less strongly marked on vegetation than the summer drought; some of the hardier plants were killed, for instance the Russian violet, which during the preceding winter had flowered uninterruptedly; and yet, even the shallower lakes, such as Rydal Mere, were frozen over, so as to allow of skating, only for two or three days, and this only once, so rapid were the changes of temperature from a low degree, as 12° to 15° and 20° to 34°–40°; it was rarely higher. And, as the mildness of last winter was shown by a forward vegetation, so the severity of the last and the protracted low temperature have been indicated by the opposite this year; now, on the 21st of March, the flower-buds of the Ribes sanguineum have only just begun to unfold, and not a leaf-bud of the sweetbrier has yet opened.

page 317 note * Of course, according to the quality of the snow, the proportion of water it will yield when thawed must vary; in one instance, when the depth of snow was 6·5 inches, the water from it measured ·54 inch; in another instance, when its depth was 4·5 inches, the water it yielded was ·47 inch. The snow was collected in the funnel of the rain-gauge; its depth was tried where it had not drifted.