England Has A Desert? - Geography Anomaly 

Norfolk resident here. It's pissing down today.

Congratulations on posting this exactly as the region is beset by extreme rain and flooding.

thetford resident here, been pissing it down all day definitely aint arid at all

Reminds me of Portugal, very small country with huge variations in precipitation, with the northwest having almost rainforest conditions, and the southeast being a demi desert.

Somehow, I suspected that England's "desert" couldn't be anywhere near Manchester.

East Anglia should be one of the wettest counties in England. Use to be mainly marshland and fenn

Being as much of the land in East Anglia is reclaimed from the sea it would interesting to see what the the microclimate would be under more natural circumstances.

We have a lot of these plants down in Cornwall I have a 10ft trachy

I love videos about the different geographical variations across Britain. I was unsure about whether to subscribe when I first found you but now I definitely am.

I remember doing this in school many years ago , but not in such detail . But I think you are over over stating your case .

I grew up in South Essex, near the Dartford Crossing. The climate there really is semi-arid these days! The climate there does feel like Spain - winter is a few weeks of dull weather around Xmas and that's it! Otherwise it seems warm all year, and baking hot in summer (I live up North now, so it really strikes me when I go there). I have a vague recollection of our geography teacher at school telling us that he only measured around 14" (say 350mm) of rain in the previous year. I think that the heat of the built up London area means that rain falls there, and no much gets across to Essex. Lawns are basically dead from May to September - the lawns in my Mother's house basically gave up and permanently died in one of the heatwaves a few years ago!

One of the locations I find fascinating is Tain Range in Easter Ross. It has a average rainfall of 660mm per year which is tiny compared to the rest of northern Scotland which has an overall average of 1701 mm per year.

i love being a Brit and going through the whole weather spectrum some weeks. today it was boiling in the afternoon (19-20 degrees), with a clear sky, late this morning we had high winds and stinging rain. early morning was light drizzle and a bit misty. the evening was dominated by light to heavy rain in waves

Did you know all of Australia's capital cities receive more annual rainfall than London

Did you really say Scarce like that? Top rhyme with arse..? Good grief Mr :)

Stanton Downham near Thetford was engulfed by sand dunes in the 18th century I think that I recall that the issue with sandstorms and sand dunes in the area was the reason why the pine forests were planted, I think with a majority of Mediterranean pine species There has been some issues with top soil erosion in the area around Thetford

My ex boss moved from Cwmbran in Wales to Corby in Northamptonshire and was staggered to discover that it can go for weeks here without raining. Though today it's persisting it down with rain!

Great stuff, awesome vid. I was always aware of these microclimates and fluctuations of our isles, having family in the green wet south west, drier, hotter north kent and the strange microclimate of thanet.

Nice video. I live in Madrid and rain here is incredibly random, one year we can have an "English" climate, the next year it does not rain at all for 5 months. That produces very different climate with not so diffetent amount of rain. Also the landscape can look like a desert or an european forest, depending on the soil, wind or human activity of a particular place. Some parts of Italy (with 800 mm of rain), can also look "arid" because of the irregular rain pattern and droughts.

Interesting almost looks like Spain and Portugal type of desert likeness , not dry type but the wet type

I live there, it still rains too much! It is raining right now, it has rained a fair amount this year as it does many years.

This climate chart resembles Norfolk, Virginia on the other side of the big pond

Milton Keynes?

So England's wetlands are our driest regions ?

Not true, there is a huge arid expanse centered around Westminster.

Very interesting video. Subscribing.

You talking about Liverpool? 😅

Another Norfolk resident. I was completing a hike from Felixstowe to Orford along the Suffolk coastline. When I got to Shingle Street village - aptly named. Zillions of sea shells everywhere. The heat was intense & I nearly flaked. Similar of your description in the video.

Hi I live in Norfolk and there are floods all over here

excellent stuff really interesting

Nice picture of a dry reservoir high in the Pennines, one of the wettest places in England and miles from East Anglia.

Isn't Dungeness the only desert in England?

Raining here today in Norwich but it has been very dry most of August and September.

Love to see northern accents holding up strong 💪 great video. Keep real instead of the fake southern ego accents.

Yeah coming from Lowestoft, suffolk here and i can confirm it is drier by alot

Interesting and thought provoking video (subscribed). There is a reason why the UK is not as cold as other countries/regions on the same latitude as the UK and that is in large part due to the Gulf stream (the Atlantic current). The Gulf stream brings warm waters up to the UK from the tropics, slowly releasing heat into the atmosphere/environment, and as such keeping those areas warmer (and wetter in the case of the UK). The Gulf stream also gives us the "Scottish Riviera", where Galloway's climate is warmer than the Scottish average and warmer than North England. If it wasn't for the Gulf stream, the UK would be a lot colder, potentially have winters like Norway in certain areas. This also then highlights the complexities inherent in climate change and environment/climate. Such as, although the climate is on average warming due to global emissions, if the Gulf stream for example dhut down, the UK would likely get colder as a result, the opposite of what climate change would indicate from it's average temperature increases. And it's facts like this that confuse people and make some believe it's not real. The climate, ecosystem and environment are incredibly interlinked and extremely complex.

The broads dont really drop in water levels like that much of it is tidal and the upper reaches are supplied by reliable chalk streams and are prevented from draining by the tidal lower reaches leaving us with very reliable water levels

There is a desert in Kent.

Very interesting topic. Great energy! I'm curious for more.

Enjoying this content as an Environmental Science nerd👍

Love this

Very interesting vlog that would surprise most of my fellow Americans. To me, the natural scenery in East Anglia and a lot of SE England reminds me of where I live near Chicago. We average about 34” of annual rainfall vs the 23”-26” in these areas. Shorter trees interspersed with tall grass prairie (as we refer to it here). This makes sense: although we get more precipitation on average (and colder winters), summers are longer and hotter and the sun angle is higher due to our lower latitude. Thus evapotranspiration is higher around here. The end result is somewhat similar scenery. Poland and parts of Ukraine look similar as well. The faux arid places you featured are anomalies but interesting.

You can make a same kind of video about the differences in rainfall in the Netherlands.

my highstreet is very deserted on a sunday afternoon

God's green valley is everywhere with English civilization.

it might be dry its NOT a desert.

I thought East Anglia was a big swamp 😂

Bit of ironic time to upload the vidoes as just received a shit tun of rain over here in just outside of Norwich 😂

Didn't had that part of England more sea estuaries and floodings in the past?

I thought Dungeness was our only desert?

I went to Dungeoness a few years back. What a godforsaken place lol

Hi Project Plant Back, thank you form doing this, my first encounter with arid semi-desert in this country was not far from Cambridge where I now live on ordinary arable land that had been taken out of cultivation for about three years, what I observed of a significant area was that the surviving weeds were growing with no overlap of their leaves, this was towards the end of the growing season about the time of 'normal' harvest. This desertification was very clearly the consequence of not only water shortage but also relentless nutrient depletion, in particular the four decades of brutaculture without any input of organic matter which is vital for the retention of water and dissolved nutrients.The approximate date of this discovery was about nineteen eighty something. As it happens that period was one in which while average annual rainfall was about normal the seasonal variations were significant with very low late summer rainfall. There was little doubt in my mind then or now that the principle reasons for this phenomenon were related to land management not climate. What I have consistently observed since is that each winter more and n=more arable fields are partially flooded and in many cases shallow water on flat land sits there for several months in spite of the proximity of drainage channels within a few metres. This too is the product of bad management, again the lack of organic matter in the soil restricts drainage, what does happen is that more of the rain runs off the surface into the drainage system and thus deprives the aquifer of its much needed top ups. Cheers, Richard.

Hi new here not sure if you done a video on it but can you do rare or endangered plants or trees with edible fruits or vegetables or idk root 😂. I hear cardon cactus Barry’s are good and get bigger then the az cactus 🌵 but also in parts of az cardon live in it. Yes I definitely got the name wrong I can say it can’t spell it ai can’t figure out what I’m saying and gives me multiple words like dam ai it’s one word work with me 😂.

But can you ride sandworms there?

The funny thing is, Europe is mostly wet on its west coast. And since there is a remarkable amount of west coast, it's also very wet. On the other hand, the east coast is much drier. Case in point: London gets less annual rainfall than Barcelona or even Malta. The difference is that in Malta, there is zero rainfall from half June until about half August or later. But at the end of summer, you tend to get massive downpours. In London, you get rain evenly distributed throughout the year.

E.A!

what a lot of nonsense

This is BS clickbait

I stopped listening as soon as I saw the ridiculous picture of saguero catcus. How do you expect to be taken seriously?