Yes it does feel like the wettest drought ever doesn’t it, hardly seems to make sense with rivers flooding; however I caught a great piece on the BBC last night which explains why we could still be reduced to using stand pipes after all this rain.
In the South East we get the majority of our water into our homes from ground wateraquifers, not from reservoirs, and because the land is baked so hard from months and months of dry weather, the rain is not soaking into the ground but running off into the rivers and streams causing flooding and not going to our vital supply source. It is a complicated business.
In short
- Rain has come at the wrong time of year
- The past 18 months have been the driest on record, resulting in low groundwater levels and ground that is extremely dry
- It will take a lot of persistent rainfall for the ground to “wet up” and water to percolate down to aquifers
To find out more, (and there are pictures for those like me who take a while to understand.) go to the Article – Who, What, Why: How much rain is needed to ease the drought? http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17875456
