Allowing for the Weather

Now we have restarted work on the garden the weather has become more important to us. When we weren't working outside we could just look out of the window and decide if going outside was worth it, but now we have to plan what happens tomorrow, or Tuesday or Wednesday.

Cement, concrete and especially chaux blanche needs a certain temperature before it will go off (cure, I guess). If the weather forecast is for very cold or very wet we have to find another task to do, or decide to do nothing at all. This means we keep a close eye on the weather forecast, and luckily there are many forecasts to chose from. The main problem is that of the 5 forecasts we get presented with each day, 2 will be completely different from the others.

What we are looking at is Tuesday's (mardi) weather. Because Preuilly sur Claise is a small town we don't get our own forecast so we use that of our nearest large neighbour, Poitiers. 3 of the 4 forecasts shown above show Tuesday as starting cold (-1°) and progressing to a balmy 2° in the afternoon. The other shows Tuesday afternoon being sunny but snowy and 0°, as does a 5th forecast (on Google, not shown).

Either forecast could be right - but we know that all the forecasts will change before now and then. In the time it took to write this, the Weather Underground forecast (bottom left corner of the picture) changed to -1° to 3°. It doesn't make planning easy!

Simon