Written by Daniel Hatton
Earlier in the year I wrote about how the weather felt like someone had left a rain machine on, giving us well over a month of driving rain, flooding everything and helping me discover every leak in the roof, leaving me feeling like I was living in a cave, only with more furniture. It rained so much that at one point we'd had rain every single day since the start of the year, and I genuinely wondered whether we'd ever see the sun again. Now, I absolutely adore the rain. It's my favourite type of weather. But even I was getting to the point where I wished it'd let off for just long enough to let the ground take a breath.
Fast forward six months, however, and we'd all be very glad to see just a fraction of that rain. It's incredible how much of a contrast it is. It hasn't rained in weeks, and I mean weeks. Writing this at the very end of July, I genuinely can't remember the last time we had any proper rain. I'm at the point where I'm having to Google pictures of raindrops just to remind myself what they look like. Apparently, I slept through a light shower the other morning, but by the time I'd woken up, the sunshine had already hoovered up what little damp the rain had caused, leaving the ground just as parched as the day before. Better still, the forecast doesn't show any meaningful rain for the foreseeable future.
The trouble is, when we don't have any rain for this long, it starts having a serious effect on our countryside and, more importantly, on our beer. You see, living in the rolling hills of Somerset, surrounded by farmland, you notice the prolonged dry weather far more than you would in a town or city. In a city you might see a few gardens turning brown, or the local park starting to resemble a beach. Here, however, the entire landscape changes colour.
Huge rolling fields that should be a luscious deep green have started to resemble the sort of beige you'd normally find inside an old Rover. Streams that usually manage at least a gentle trickle all year round have dried up completely, and, most worryingly of all, the crops seem to have simply called it a day. I read recently that farmers have described this year's harvest as one of the worst in years because the lack of rain meant many crops simply never had the chance to properly develop, meaning less yield, which means less beer.
This is the second summer in a row I've found myself noticing it too. I was sitting in the garden the other evening, staring at what used to be my lawn and is now better described as a hay bale, when it dawned on me just how much our summers seem to have changed.
Growing up, I remember helping my dad mow the lawn, knowing full well we'd be doing exactly the same thing again the following weekend because it'd grown fifteen feet in a week. I remember summer holidays in paddling pools, sitting on bright green grass. I even remember the hills staying green even during a heatwave.
Fast forward to today, and those same hills have taken on a sandy yellow colour that wouldn't look out of place in Botswana. Six months ago they were underwater. Today they're beginning to resemble the Makgadikgadi Salt Pans.
Then there's the fire risk. Every day now it seems reports of grass fires and hill fires are in the news. In fact, a few days ago there was a hill fire barely a mile from my house. It was a strange thing to see from the window, made stranger still by the fact it happened on exactly the same day I was suffering from what can only be described as a very one-sided argument with my digestive system, to the point that I could sympathise with the burning sensation the hill must have been feeling.
The frightening thing is how quickly our countryside has turned into one enormous tinderbox. It only takes one discarded barbecue, one carelessly flicked cigarette or one idiot deciding a disposable barbecue on dry grass is a sensible idea, and suddenly an entire hillside is on fire.
What worries me most, though, is what if this is the new normal?
Of course it'll rain again. We're in Britain. Give it six months and I'll probably be writing another article about how I'm considering selling the car and buying a hovercraft because Somerset has become the country's newest inland sea. The trouble, though, is that by then all that rain will be too late. The harvest won't magically recover because the November skies decide to empty, and the ground that's baked solid all summer won't absorb half of it anyway. It'll simply rush downhill into the rivers, causing them to burst their banks, and we'll all spend winter in rowboats.
It feels like we're constantly swinging between two extremes. Either the fields are underwater or they're dry enough to catch fire. We never seem to get the bit in the middle anymore. What’s worse is the livestock are suffering as well, with the fields so parched and the grass so dry, there is no sustenance or moisture for them to live on. Plus I can’t imagine how it must feel to wear all that wool in this heat.
I think it is time to start coming up with ridiculous ideas to go up against this ridiculous weather. Massive underground reservoirs beneath farmland, or collecting winter rainwater and storing it until July. Robots that irrigate just the plants to efficiently water crops. Whether those ideas are brilliant or the result of spending too long in the sun is another matter entirely, but doing nothing feels like the dafter option.
Until then, though, perhaps we could all do one small thing. If the countryside has turned into one giant tinder box, maybe let's stop lighting disposable barbecues in the middle of it and then acting surprised when the entire field ends up looking like burnt toast.