Abstract
THE appendices to the Weekly Weather Reports for the year 1887, recently published by the Meteorological Office, contain some interesting details relative to the rainfall. It is shown that the mean rainfall for the whole of the British Islands during 1887 was only 25.8 inches, whereas the mean for the twenty-two years 1866 to 1887 was 35.3 inches, so that there is a deficiency of nearly 10 inches over the whole area of the British Islands, or 27 per cent, less than usual. In the wheat-producing districts, which comprise the east of England and Scotland, the south of England, and the Midland Counties, the fall during 1887 was 21 inches, and the average value for twenty-two years is 28.5 inches, showing a deficiency in these parts of the Kingdom of 7.5 inches, or 26 per cent, less than usual. In the principal grazing districts, which comprise the west of England and Scotland, as well as Ireland, the fall in 1887 was 30.5 inches, and the value for the twenty-two years is 42.3 inches, showing a deficiency of 11.5 inches, or 27 per cent, less than the average. In the north-west of England the rainfall for 1887 was only 24.9 inches, which is 157 inches or 39 per cent, less than the average, and in the south-west of England the fall was 28.3 inches, which is 16.6 inches or 37 per cent, less than usual. Last year was the driest of any year since 1866, and this feature was common to all parts of the United Kingdom; the amount of rain measured was only about one-half of that recorded in 1872, which was the wettest year of the period. If the comparison is confined to the last ten years, the deficiency is nearly as marked, and 1887 is still found to be about 25 per cent, below the average, but the greatest deficiency in this case occurs in the Midland Counties, where it amounts to 36 per cent, of the average. The reports issued by the Meteorological Office for the first five or six weeks of the present year show the deficiency of rainfall still to be augmenting, and even more quickly than in any period last year. In the Midland Counties the rainfall to February 6 was only 0.6 inch instead of 2.9 inches, so that the deficiency from January 3 is as much as 79 per cent, of the average fall; and at Hereford, where the total fall is only 0.29 inch, the deficiency is 90 per cent, of the average. In the east of England the deficiency is 64 per cent, in the south-west of England 61 per cent., and in the northwest of England 58 per cent. There has been a deficiency of rain in all districts of England each week for seven consecutive weeks since December 19, with the exception of a single district (England N.E.) in one week, and since the beginning of October there have been but four weeks in which the excess of rain was at all general. Out of fifty-seven weeks since the commencement of 1887 there have been but ten in the south-west and east of England with an excess of rainfall, and only eleven in the north-west of England. With these facts to hand, there seems reasonable ground for alarm being felt in some localities at the threatened scarcity of water.
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HARDING, C. Threatened Scarcity of Water. Nature 37, 375 (1888). https://doi.org/10.1038/037375a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/037375a0