The earth dies burning

Last winter, at least to my memory, was very wet.

So wet that the Drellingore flowed before Christmas I seem to recall, and was on February25th this year.

It usually took months of rain for this to flow, and yet there it was living proof of the abundance of rain we in east Kent had received up to that point.

The last significant rain I can recall was on 20th May, this was my comment on the day:

"Water! Falling from the sky!

These are the last few days of "spring", with, according to the Met Office, summer will be arriving on Friday, and by Saturday it will be 29 degrees.

By which point we can all complain about how darn hot it is.

But until then, it is cloudy, with frequent heavy rain showers, a keen breeze, and we need the heating on.

Not that it was cold, just felt cold."

After that damp winter, we had a dry Spring, followed by a dry June and July. At Kew, there was no measureable rain for the whole month of July, the first month on record that had happened.

Not only was it dry in east Kent, or all of Kent, or the South East of England or all of England, but most of Europe too.

May Day weekend we had temperatures of 37 degrees in the south east, the hottest May or June day on record.

Wild flowers failed, crops failed, rains failed.

Then came the wildfires.

Not just here, but in Canada and parts of the US too. In the Pacific a mega-El Nino is brewing that will put more heat into the oceans and provide the energy for more extreme weather.

The colour of western Europe this summer is burnet brown grass. We saw it all up our drive through western France, then into Normandy to Calais, then here in Kent. All bar the hardiest of native plants with the deepest of tap roots is dead.

There will be low yields from crops, food prices will go up and there will be shortages. And yet our new Prime Minister has said nothing about the drought.

A new heatwave is coming on Thursday, London might hit 38 degrees of higher. It'll be cooler here, but not by much.

Looking at the two week forecast on the BBC, there might be rain on the 22nd.

Might be.

Of course we cut short our holiday due to high temperatures, returning home to where it was, for a time, bearable.

The right wing press report on the drought and wildfires, while they attack the Government for their net zero policy, the one policy that might turn things around, and instead demand we drill for more oil. While our techbro overlords demand data centres that each will consume more water and energy than a city, and pump out more heat.

The techbros plan trips to Mars to make that habitable while it would be cheaper and more sensible to save the planet we currently live on.