Author: Harry Hayfield

When the entire country’s attention will focus on a four mile section of the River Thames in London going from Putney to Mortlake which can be done in a fast a time as 16′ 19″ (10 knots) and over the last 189 years has been won by Cambridge 83 times and by Oxford 80 times (including a tie in 1877). However, rowing on open water, in the early spring does cause one or two problems as has been only too well demonstrated in the past.

1859: Oxford
“It would not have been easy to pitch on a more unfavourable day for an eight-oared race” reported the Times the following day due to the weather conditions, but it was the toss of the coin that decided things as Oxford won and chose Middlesex allowing them to avoid the worst of the weather leaving Cambridge on the Surrey side and as a result they sank at Hammersmith

1912: No winner
The spring of 1912 was a terrible spring with the weather leading up to the event completely at ends with itself, so it should come as no surprise to hear that neither team managed to reach the end of the course sinking (Oxford sinking at Hammersmith Bridge and Cambridge at the Harrods Depository)

1925: Cambridge
Thanks to a strong wind just after the start of the race, Oxford (who were drawn on Surrey) found that they simply could not navigate and less than a minute later sank and led to an almighty row that very nearly stopped the Boat Race entirely

1951: Cambridge (at the second attempt)
The weather was so bad that the referee announced a “no row” (the same as being cancelled) and a few days later they held it again.

1978: Oxford
The race started at 2.45pm in reasonable conditions however just after Barnes bridge this happened

2016: The women’s race became the first women’s race to be looked at very closely when this happened to Cambridge

And what of the forecast for today? Well, if there is going to a weather effect it will most likely happen at Hammersmith Bridge and the forecast for there for the time of the race? Heavy rain with winds gusting to 12mph (in other words, place your bets on a sinking!)

In 1942 when the film Bambi was released, people always expected April showers (or lambing storms as they are known in the UK) to be brief, heavy downpours of rain, so what they would make of some of the scenes being photographed across Northern England this morning I wouldn’t like to say, save this “REWRITE”

pecially when, as they are dealing with electrics, they have to switch the power off so many times that (as was the case with me) from 11.27am GMT on St. Valentine’s Day until 1.53pm GMT on February 24th my wifi ceased to exist and as such completely ruined my tallies for February (during which time we had temperatures reaching 70°F, setting a new February high).

Those highs produced another problem as Saddleworth Moor (for the second time in less than a year) erupted into flames and whilst that fire was put out in less than 24 hours, the Farmer’s Guardian newspaper had it as their lead story following a conference on the subject of the climate that noted “rivers are below average” and that “concerns were growing” over the 2019 season. This was proven here as throughout February we had only 38mm of rain (1½ inches of rain) on seven days.

Thanks to Nathan very kindly sending me his weather station (so that I am now able to record the temperature remotely, which being a carer is an absolute godsend) I am now able to produce my first full climate data for January 2019. The average maximum temperature was 8.09°C (46.56°F) and the average minimum temperature was 3.87°C (38.97°F) with the mean temperature being 5.98°C (42.76°F). Compared with long term averages (as published by the UK Met Office), we have been on average for the maximum (47°F) and warmer than average for the minimum (36°F). The extremes for the month were a maximum of 12°C (54°F) on the 13th and a minimum of -4°C (25°F) on the 3rd. Despite the forecast of mass dumps of snow across Wales over the last day, we have had absolutely nothing here and only very small amounts on the nearby hills.

With regard to rainfall we had a total of 53.5mm (2.10″) on 14 days. On average we are supposed to have 11 days of rain in January delivering around three inches of rain.