Mark Hunt’s Weather Assessment
4th – 11th December 2009

For a good while now the UK and Ireland have been stuck in a series of cold lows which have brought heavy rain and cool temperatures to most areas. Ireland, the South-West, Wales, North of England and Scotland were the worst affected. I won't concern myself with rainfall figures to date because they're dire, so let's move on to what's coming.

We have a continuation of the pattern of cool / cold low pressure systems commencing with a new low moving in from the South West. This will affect Ireland from later on the 4th with heavy rain and high winds and will move through the UK on the 5th, with another band of rain due in that night. Sunday will give us a lull with cool air and the chance of a frost as skies clear (we've had 2 ground frosts year to date in the Midlands)

Another band of rain moves through on Monday 6th (in the morning in Ireland and in the afternoon in the UK) then this clears away to leave an unsettled pattern with high winds and blustery showers. Unfortunately, it looks as though there will not be much opportunity to spray next week until the back end. The latter part of next week looks like an odd one as a high pressure moves up from the Azores bringing settled milder weather, though I think this is more likely to be morning fog / frosts and bright, drier days.

Disease-wise, Fusarium is bubbling away, not aggressive, but it's there and some courses had a particularly bad outbreak during late November. This was no surprise really when you look at the way the soil temperature picked up from the 17th of the month and held on to be higher than the last 4 years through until the 27th.

Below is a graph of the November soil temperatures for the last 4 years so you can see the trend - November 2009's average was 8.3°C, that is nearly 2°C higher than the last two years!

Mark Hunt
Technical Director
Headland Amenity Ltd

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