Weather warning for gardeners.

[ohyouBadBadkitten]

Don't get fooled by the lovely sunny weather and put out all your bedding plants and what not. Just looked at the forecast for the week after next (Easter hols) and at the moment it is showing a step change to much colder weather ( with some welcome rain but the small possibility of some rather unwelcome snow)

Ohhh just a bit of rain would be so nice, preferably before Easter & overnight.

The last lot of heavy rain we had (weekend before last) made my garden spring into life & now it looks at its very best....but the water butt is getting low & we need more rain!

We do, I've only recorded 20mm this month, far far too little.

I emptied my water butt at the weekend and now I have to water my plants from a can off the outside tap. I will be sensible about it though, and do it last thing in the evening, a really good soak only every few days. However dry my topsoil looks, not far beneath it is heavy clay which means it is nice and damp down there for roots. I might see if there is a soil moisture gizmo that can tell me how damp it is at different depths.

Dry surface might also be a good slug inhibitor this year remember! (every cloud...)

I need to drill a hole in the new 210 litre one for the supply from the downpipe, before the next rain comes.

I think you probably have enough time to do that Lexi!

I've just dug over the veggies plot and the soil is bone dry. Even our freshwater stream is at its lowest for 4 years - I can seen the roots of the tree by the side of it. Unscientifically I would guess its 4 inches below its normal level.

I can't actually remember the last time it rained properly.

Where is 'chance of snow' you talk of??

Scotland?

this is still a bit equivocal but today definitely seems like the last day of the 20 deg sunshine.

Good, coz DH and I are mixing concrete for the shed base tomorrow and it was bastard hot work in the sunshine when we did the first half on Sunday!!

Piglet, it's changed quite a bit since the original forecast, much less chance of precip in general. Perhaps Good Friday in higher parts of Scotland, the more northern central and eastern parts. Pretty dry Everywhere in the run up.

The pics on that article made me laugh Lexi. Here's someone in the sun. Here's someone in the snow. Just in case it wasn't clear

See I knew this was the place to come :)

A FB friend was saying about snow coming and I thought I knew just the right person to ask!

We are the far SE corner so thought it unlikely to snow here quite so easily.

We have a tiny bit of sleet and snow forecast for us up here (eastern Scot.) but then temps rising fast, so it won't last.

But as we've just been having 21, 22 degrees all my peonies have gone mad with buds so will probably get frosted

On the plus side, the bees are getting a good early feed now and can hide away for the cold spell.

Oh that's good really Hopefully all the blossom and daffs wont get killed off then!

Chipping!! It was quite unlikely down here

Unfortunately snow may be back on the cards for Tuesday in northern hilly parts. No model concensus on that yet. Watch this space!

We're off up to Yorkshire tomorrow for the week. The BBC 5 day forecast are giving us a 'light snow shower' for Tuesday night and it looks chilly for the rest of the week (according to TheWeatherChannel) It's going to be a bit of a shock to the system after this week!

(Have you had your consultation yet, OYBBK?)

I have Gloria :) update

if ecmwf is right, it could be more than a light snow shower!

Have read your update (lovely idea for such a supportive thread BTW.) So I guess it went 'okay-ish', although it's a pain that stuff that you want to get on with (like booking to go away) is still 'up in the air.'

More than a light snow shower then eh?

Possibly!! I'd be prepared.

Some really lovely kind people on that thread :) kind of deciding I just need to live more in the moment - getting well enough to get back to work will be a splendid first step.

Fraid I'm going to have to issue another 'gardeners warning' for possibly some severe frosts this bank holiday weekend gfs isn't really making sense on this but it does at the moment show lows of -6c in the NE on Saturday night, with even the south having temps below zero.

Silly silly weather.

Thanks for the heads up badkitten - please do keep issuing reminders for us this month. I'll have to earth up my potatoes..

Will do my best :)

Thanks :)

There used to be a rather good free frost alert service that dropped me an e-mail when a frost was forecast, but it stopped working a couple of years ago. My spuds got badly caught last year - they recovered OK so all wasn't lost, but it is always nice to be able to harvest earlies when they are at their most expensive in the shops rather than 3 weeks later.

met office dont seem to be going for quite such brutal lows while the GFS model has a -6C for North Wales on sat night.