Another mild and sunny day

November 2010 was a fairly dry month, but that is the only weather feature it shared with this November. So far this month there have been no air frosts, although tonight could change that statistic. There have been several mild and sunny days, a continuing characteristic of this autumn, and although the leaves have fallen off most of the trees, the run up to winter is very different from last year. On this day in 2010, it was cloudy, not unusual of course, but the maximum temperature was only 1.4 Celsius. That is 12.7 Celsius lower than the highest temperature recorded today. Although a frost is a possibility for tonight, the minimum will undoubtedly be several degrees higher than on the corresponding night last year. On that night the temperature fell to minus 5.9 Celsius, the lowest November reading for 21 years. On the last day of the month there was heavy snow, and the good folk of this area awoke on the 1st of December to an 8 centimetre covering of snow! Not so this year, presumably.

The Autumn Harvest

The 25 millimetres of rain that fell on Thursday made it the second wettest day of the year, but fortunately the dry autumn has left the soil very manageable. The potatoes have been lifted and the crop looks good, so many baking potatoes for the next few months. There is a heavy crop of carrots, but they're not particularly large and wireworm has been rather problematical this autumn. A bonus this November has been the lack of air frost, so far. There were some white ground frosts on a couple of mornings during October, but no damaging air frosts have occurred this autumn and this has allowed the second crop of figs to ripen. The wet summer in this area has led to a bumper crop of celeriac and beetroot, and netting has largely managed to keep the abundant Cabbage White butterfly away from the brassicas. So, the autumn harvest is now in, with the prospect of cabbages and sprouts for the winter months ahead.