So all this raIn must be doing something, right?

[minimoonumbertwo]

It has rained here (sw London) every day for the last 10 days, and the 5 day forecast is rain every day - surely must be helping the drought situation??

Apparently it is the wrong type of rain so hosepipe ban will stay in place.

What?!. It's just miserable!

I think it has to be weeks of drizzly rain to seep slowly down into the water table to refill the reservoirs, heavy rain just runs off the dry ground and into the rivers/drainage so not as good. I might be wrong though.

I have been told that it's the wrong time of year too, as all those pesky plants are sucking up the water. They may have been pulling my leg though.

That does all make sense actually, it does dry up pretty quickly. So the plants benefit at least...

Well I dunno, having lived in Australia during their drought when everything was brown instead of green - I can't quite take this one as seriously.

Spot on Piff - also more chance of flooding in certain areas because the ground is so hard... a lot of people think that because its rained the drought isn't here any more which is just confounded by the messages in the press when infact it isn't that simple.

The general rule of thumb is that rain that falls between 1 March & 1 October simply won't go down the water table. Reality is that it can, but not enough to alleviate a drought, and won't reach water table for a few years, anyway.
We are mining water anyway, ground water tables are on a long term decline. Don't ask me what it means for our grandchildren. I shudder to think.

In areas where humans mostly use surface water (Yorkshire), then heavy rainfall any time of year might be helpful to human supplies.

Thanks everyone for clearing that up, pretty depressing all round!

Think how you would have to be watering with a watering can if it weren't raining shame we only have a paved yard--