A Spring walk and El Nino
Thanks to Robin Yeld
This afternoon* I took a short walk across the middle of Chidham and  had confirmed once again that we do live in the most beautiful part  of the world. Houses sit in the middle of a sea of food absorbing the  suns energy and with the soils help transform it into edible produce  for us. It is amazing to think that these dark green fields will be harvested in around 12-14 weeks.

* (early May, blame the webmaster for the delay in getting this article up on the site)
  I have taken some shots of flowers close up just because often we  don't see the tiny detail in these amazing riots of colour and shape.  My kids were amazed at the sheer design beauty of these structures of  nature.
Spring has come on very suddenly and it seems to have caused so  many plants to quickly erupt into flower. Maybe they realise that it  could be a very dry summer and they are trying to reproduce and set  seeds quickly whilst they still have the water.
After a reasonably wet winter which  saw the ditches running gently for most of it the ground has become  very hard. Again this is natures way of holding the available water  in the soil and when it gets even more baked it will crack and open  to allow air and rain ( when it arrives ) to percolate down rather  than just run off. In the garden the easy way to preserve water is to  pile on the compost to prevent water loss and not to water unless the  plant is really wilting.
  We are at the end of an event called El Nino at the moment. First  described in 1923 it is a temperature fluctuation in the surface  water of the eastern Pacific. Usually the trade winds drive the ocean  westward. The ocean warms due to longer exposure to the sun. During  an El Nino period the eastern trade winds lessen and the warm  currents flood eastward towards central America and Peru.
The usual  upsurge of cold water along the Peruvian coast provides a huge amount of food for the fishing industry and very dry weather for the coastal  areas. In an El Nino year flooding is common and the fishing industry  suffers very badly as the warm currents ( up to 5 degrees  difference ) carry little food. The coast can be littered with fish  that have starved to death.
The 1998 event was the worst so far  causing 16% of the worlds reefs to die through temperature changes  which caused bleaching. There is still a debate on weather El Nino is  linked to global warming, but there is little doubt that their effect  generally is getting stronger at each occurrence and that it does  affect global weather patterns and this exceptionally dry spring  could well be a result. .....