Town and Country Climate.

I just read that in England, 2012 has been the wettest year since records began. In the UK as a whole, it’s still just behind the 2000 all-time high, but is expected to beat it this weekend.

I thought back to 2000, which I don’t remember having been a particularly wet year. Ah, but, I was living in the city in 2000, and I was reminded again of how much greater is the awareness of environmental conditions when you live in the countryside. You learn of one farmer who lost a whole field of hay to the wet conditions, and of another who had to use his winter feed in the summer because the grazing was ruined, and how his sheep were getting foot ailments because of all the mud in the pasture. You see the landscape transformed into a succession of pools where there should be earth, and watch the torrents of water driving out of the open land drains. And, of course, it’s several degrees colder in the countryside, and the wind tends to be fiercer because there are fewer obstacles to impede it.

The people worst affected, though, are those living in small towns and villages close to rivers. They’re the ones who’ve suffered repeated flooding this year. I read of one publican in a small town in Cornwall who’s decided to pack his bags because he’s been flooded out twelve times in as many weeks.

And I do realise that we in Britain are lucky compared with people who live in parts of the world which get hurricanes, or tornadoes, or tidal waves, or earthquakes, or volcanic eruptions, or catastrophic mud slides. So I keep my complaints on low burn.