The two biggest sellers in any bookshop are the cookbooks and the diet books. The cookbooks tell you how to prepare the food and the diet books tell you how not to eat any of it - Andy Rooney
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| Photo 1: Water Scorpion (Newton Brook, 22/5/26) |
The previous record for warmest Hereford day in 2026 was in 26 ℃ on April 8th. It has taken nearly a month for that record to be broken because May has been cooler than normal this year. Sufficiently cool, in fact, that it has delayed sowing and planting out in the kitchen garden. However, the 2026 heat record was finally broken on the 22nd May when the temperature climbed to 28 ℃.
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| Table 1: May 2026 Temperatures in Hereford |
As this excerpt from my Weatherlink.com page shows, May 22nd was 10 ℃ warmer than the average maximum temperature during May 2026. It certainly felt much warmer with just a single layer of clothing (T-shirt) needed well into the evening. Some of that evening was spent doing a Riverfly Survey on our local Newton Brook where we test the water quality as citizen scientists. It has taken a while to get our site approved for the Riverfly Monitoring Scheme as there is quite a bit of training involved.
The good news: we found a water scorpion (Photo 1). The bad news: a predominance of water shrimp (Gammarus pulex) over all other species and no mayfly or caddis fly larvae. This is indicative of a watercourse that is not in the best of health.
We will be doing monthly surveys from now on to establish a baseline population of aquatic animal life over the next year. Then looking at ways to improve the river habitat and water quality.
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