No 'meaningful' rainfall in Shropshire for a whole month after threats of flooding in January
The start of 2023 brought the threat of flooding in Shrewsbury and Telford and left hundreds of acres of farmland underwater across the region.
Those high water levels seem a distant memory as the county clocked up more that 30 days of "no meaningful rain".
And, while it is too early to predict what the summer might bring, environment expert, Dave Throup, says the swings between wet and dry, hot and cold, are an indication of future weather.
Former Environment Agency manager in Shropshire, Dave, said the weather station at Shawbury currently showed 32 continuous days of less than a millimetre of rain.
"It's a remarkable dry spell in the middle of winter after what was quite significant high river levels on the Severn and Wye only about six weeks ago," he said.
"The land is really quite dry for farmers sowing their land."
He said while reservoirs in Wales were almost full, last year's drought showed how quickly things could change.
"Climate change means we are seeing more extremes, torrential rain followed by record-breaking temperatures and no rain at all."
"We are better placed in the west compared to places like East Anglia and the South East where they have less rainfall. We have to look at how we can move water from one region to another in the future."
A spokesperson for the Environment Agency said: “Following heavy rainfall at the beginning of the year we saw high river levels along the River Severn. There has been much less rainfall in recent weeks and river levels have returned to those we could would expect for this time of year.”
Reservoirs in the Elan Valley and the Clywedog are 96.5 per cent and 88.1 per cent full while Lake Vyrnwy, so dry last summer the remains of the flooded village on its bed could be seen, is 80 per cent full.
A Severn Trent spokesperson said: “Following the long, hot summer which we experienced last year, it is great to see that our reservoir levels are returning to a healthy level. This is due to both the management of water in our network throughout the year and the help of our customers who have been fantastic in reducing their water use over the summer.
“It is likely that we’ll see another hot and dry summer this year, so we are continuing to ask our customers to continue to be mindful of the ways that they use water at home.”
There is little or no rain forecast for the region over the next two weeks with temperatures cooling towards the weekend and into next week.
