By yesterday, 92.4mm of rain had been recorded at the Maison St Louis Observatory in St Saviour this month and it had rained every day between 3 and 17 October. A meteorological ‘rain day’ is a 24-hour period in which at least 0.2mm of rain is recorded.
Jersey Water yesterday turned off the desalination plant, which was fired up last month to replenish the Island’s supplies. Although reservoir levels have risen from 60% full to about 66% in the last few weeks, the ground is still exceptionally dry and the streams are only supplying about five million litres of water into the reservoirs each day.
The Island is still using about 18 million litres per day, but Jersey Water hopes that a forecast continuation of the wet weather, coupled with an expected drop in demand during the autumn and winter, will help to increase supplies.
The company is aiming for reservoirs to be full by 1 April.
Jersey Met is forecasting the unsettled weather to last until at least the start of next week.
Although the relentless wet weather has led to a total rainfall just shy of the average of the whole of the month (104.7mm), it has been positively dry compared to 2004’s recording-breaking wettest-ever October, when the Island saw 218.9mm of rain.
