Weatherwatch: Not enough rain to saturate ponds

Ponds built to protect rare species
More rain is required to saturate the ponds of central England to provide breeding grounds for frogs. Photograph: Environment Agency/PA

A survey of 10 local ponds last week found they were all dry. The ponds are normally permanent enough to provide successful breeding grounds for frogs but not for fish, sometimes drying out in warm summers. Test pits dug 50cms in the garden showed that the soil is drier the deeper you dig.

This is central England, not the West Country or Scotland where the ground is well saturated. In these parts there has been some rain in recent months and quite a lot at the weekend, but not enough to compensate for the extremely dry spring.

Recently a colleague wrote about the terrible drought of 1921 that similarly left much of south-east England parched. In that year, like this one, the areas affected were east of a line between Bournemouth and Lincoln. In 1921 Kew Gardens in west London, had an average of 2.5cm of rain a month compared with 5.4cm in normal years. It was also extremely hot. That drought had much more serious consequences. Local ponds were then vital for farmers because no mains water was laid on.† At Stanbridge in Bedfordshire all the village ponds dried up killing the stocks of carp and leaving valuable cattle without water. The local baker made daily visits to the nearby town for the nearest water supply. He filled three milk churns full of water to replenish a holding tank bought by a farmer. It was Christmas before there was enough rain to start filling the ponds again.
This article was amended on 7 November 2011 to correct conversions from imperial measurements to metric.