For help, advice and discussion about stuff not related to aviation. Play nice: no religion, no politics and no axe grinding please.
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By Paul_Sengupta
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1828116
Paultheparaglider wrote:It does seem to be becoming the new normal.


There was a programme on S4C last night about the flooding in the Rhondda last year. (in Welsh but with subtitles available) They were talking about events which were touted as "a hundred year event" or "a thousand year event" now taking place 3 or 4 times in a two year period.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p096bt9x

https://dlo6cycw1kmbs.cloudfront.net/media/media_assets/08_DRYCH_RhonddaWedir_Glaw.pdf
RayP liked this
#1828119
Last February, Paul, the river Usk at Usk reached a level of 5.8 metres - about a metre higher than the previous record. I've attached a photo below of what my garden looked like at the time. I've also added one of a family of otters playing on a small bit of my river bank defence that wasn't fully under at that point.

24 hours later the water was all gone from my garden, but the amount of debris left was a real pain to clear up.

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User avatar
By eltonioni
#1828169
Paul_Sengupta wrote:
Paultheparaglider wrote:It does seem to be becoming the new normal.


There was a programme on S4C last night about the flooding in the Rhondda last year. (in Welsh but with subtitles available) They were talking about events which were touted as "a hundred year event" or "a thousand year event" now taking place 3 or 4 times in a two year period.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p096bt9x

https://dlo6cycw1kmbs.cloudfront.net/media/media_assets/08_DRYCH_RhonddaWedir_Glaw.pdf


That's a general misunderstanding of the term. A 1/1000 year event can happen twice a year, or five times, or twenty times, because what it means is the statistical chance of one in a thousand PER YEAR, not once every thousand years. NB,since there are also 365 days in a year on which said storm can happen it suddenly looks a bit less dramatic.

Whether the numbers need recalibrating is another discussion because flooding is really carp. At least a fire gets the job done and dusted quickly.
#1828193
eltonioni wrote:Whether the numbers need recalibrating is another discussion


I think this is what we are discussing. We are saying these rainfall events are becoming far more common in recent years which indicates a recalibration is, indeed, needed.

Warmer, wetter winters are going to impact more and more on crop decisions if they keep happening, which seems quite likely.
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By kanga
#1828224
While we were in Maryland, early '80s, one winter we had what local TV stations were calling 'the snowstorm of the century'. While we were in Ottawa, late '80s, I was one of a group of Canadian DND folk who, with some UK MoD ones, were to attend a conference at that same DoD facility. We all flew in to Baltimore or Dulles on the Sunday, for the conference staring on the Monday. On Sunday night there was another TV-described 'snowstorm of the century'. I got a bit cynical about media about media descriptions of a 'once in a x' events :wink: ; however, I do believe the scientists (including the occasionally scorned government meteorologists and climatologists in UK, US, Canada, ..) when they say that 'extreme' events are becoming more frequent..
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By TheFarmer
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1828680
Well, it’s late Feb, and time to wake the crop up after a long winter sleeping.

The soil temperatures are rising, and the crop needs to start putting root and leaf mass on.

In total, I’ll feed it 225 KG’s of nitrogen per hectare through the growing season. This is the main spring plant food, and it allows the crop to flourish.

I apply mine in four even splits of around 55kgs/ha, and at around three weeks apart to keep it constantly with food.

I use a solution Nitrogen fertiliser that I can apply through my sprayer. It’s more accurate than a spinner with solid granules, and I can pump what I don’t use back into the tower tank. It’s 30% nitrogen as a solution, so I need to apply around 165 litres per hectare to get 55 kgs in a single pass. I’ll be back through it doing the same in three weeks time.

The sprayer takes around 8 minutes to fill with 3500 litres, and that’s enough for 21 hectares. Our Flyer crop is 19 hectares, so I can do it in one hit.

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By TheFarmer
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1828682
The application nozzles I’m using (brown in photo) are designed for fertiliser, and give six streams per nozzle into the crop at around 2.5 Bar. I can go in the rain, and when it’s quite windy too, two other benefits to using a spinner and solid products.

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By TheFarmer
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1828684
The sprayer is 24 metres wide when unfolded, and nozzles are 50 cm apart. It’s all done hydraulically, so need to exit the cab.

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By TheFarmer
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1828703
As when planting, the accuracy of the auto-steer is pretty much 0cm deviation precision, pass by pass, as can be seen int he top middle green box.

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Meaning that when it’s all set up nicely, one can sit back, take one’s loafers, off, put one’s feet up, and have a nice cup of tea and some cake.

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By TheFarmer
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1828704
The liquid fertiliser strips the waxy layer off the crop leaf, so I will have to leave it a couple of weeks before I treat it with a selective herbicide to kill broad leaf weeds and black grass. If I go back in too soon there’s a chance I can damage the crop, so getting this on in good time today buys me time.
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