The Spring Drought in the British Isles

Abstract

THE spring of 1938 has been rendered memorable in the British Isles by a remarkable sequence of meteorological events, the results of which have been disastrous to the horticultural and farming sections of the community. The main purpose of this article is to furnish data in regard to the drought, but it is important to realize that the deficiency of rain, unprecedented as it has been, is only one aspect of a singularly unfavourable meteorological complex. Thus the fruit growers would probably have made little complaint about the drought if they had been spared the frosts of April and early May, following upon an exceptionally mild March in which all vegetation made rapid growth. Incidentally, March and April have provided an example of the untrustworthiness of the generalization that the rainfall of the British Isles is related to the direction of the prevailing wind ; in March we had a great shortage of rainfall and the winds were persistently south-westerly ; in April we also had a very dry month and the winds were persistently north-easterly.