Good evening, everyone. As I enter the 30th day of meteorological drought I've found that I'm just 9 days short of breaking the 1976 record, which, of course, won't happen. But I thought it would be interesting to see how this year compares with others.Whatever happens it is now the driest spell for 20 years here. https://wp.me/p2VSmb-2NF

In message ,
Scott W writes
Good evening, everyone. As I enter the 30th day of meteorological
drought I've found that I'm just 9 days short of breaking the 1976
record, which, of course, won't happen. But I thought it would be
interesting to see how this year compares with others.Whatever happens
it is now the driest spell for 20 years here. https://wp.me/p2VSmb-2NF

Thanks, Scott. Very interesting.

The initial graph (repeated later on) is a bit confusing, as the axes
aren't adequately labelled. I'm guessing that the X-axis is years, but
labelling with actual years would make it much easier to read at clarify
whether years run left-to-right or right-to-left.. I assume that the
Y-axis is number of days of the longest drought during that year.

There's something wrong with the first row of the table. Either the 38
days is wrong or, as I suspect, 27/08/1976 should read 27/07/1976.

It's surprising how bunched together the longest droughts are. You'd
expect one or two outliers, but it's as if there is some invisible
ceiling limiting the length.

Mot surprisingly, all the longest droughts of 25 days or more occur
between late February (start date) and mid October (end date). There
haven't been any such lengthy droughts in late autumn or winter.
--
John Hall
"Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history
that man can never learn anything from history."
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

Thanks, John, it should be 27/7. I have real problems making graphs on Excel - if anyone knows of a better spreadsheet package?

On Monday, July 9, 2018 at 9:09:48 PM UTC+1, John Hall wrote:
In message ,
Scott W writes
Good evening, everyone. As I enter the 30th day of meteorological
drought I've found that I'm just 9 days short of breaking the 1976
record, which, of course, won't happen. But I thought it would be
interesting to see how this year compares with others.Whatever happens
it is now the driest spell for 20 years here. https://wp.me/p2VSmb-2NF

Thanks, Scott. Very interesting.

The initial graph (repeated later on) is a bit confusing, as the axes
aren't adequately labelled. I'm guessing that the X-axis is years, but
labelling with actual years would make it much easier to read at clarify
whether years run left-to-right or right-to-left.. I assume that the
Y-axis is number of days of the longest drought during that year.

There's something wrong with the first row of the table. Either the 38
days is wrong or, as I suspect, 27/08/1976 should read 27/07/1976.

It's surprising how bunched together the longest droughts are. You'd
expect one or two outliers, but it's as if there is some invisible
ceiling limiting the length.

Mot surprisingly, all the longest droughts of 25 days or more occur
between late February (start date) and mid October (end date). There
haven't been any such lengthy droughts in late autumn or winter.
--
John Hall
"Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history
that man can never learn anything from history."
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)