It's grey, overcast and quite cool this morning with the promise of some wet weather later in the day and the prospect of an Atlantic storm sweeping the country tomorrow.  We shall see.  The rain can't come soon enough, but we could do without the wind.

I had a phone call yesterday evening from one of my contacts in the village to report a large volume of very cloudy water entering the depleted river at Whit Beck (Monkey Beck).  A trip down there confirmed his observations.  The beck was putting a lot of very murky water into the main presumably from the quarry.  This was making the river cloudy all the way down to the wooden footbridge at the far end of Parker's Wood.  I am assuming that it's lime washing and a pH check shows that the alkalinity is pretty high at 8.8.  I am in two minds whether to report this as a pollution incident or just keep monitoring for the time being as the flow coming out of Whit Beck is pushing the muck downstream fairly quickly and there is no evidence of any detrimental impact on fish in the vicinity.  I will seek advice.

Still no rain.

Ian