“What we really need at the moment is a nice steady 24 hours of rain,” said Gerald.

THE recent rain may have seemed like a deluge but it was not enough to satisfy the district’s increasingly desperate gardeners.

According to Ely’s resident weather observer Gerald Rolfe, about six millimetres of rain fell over the city on Sunday and Monday – far short of what was needed.

“What we really need at the moment is a nice steady 24 hours of rain,” said Gerald.

“The trouble with the sharp bursts of rain we have been having is that they tend to just run off the ground because the dry weather has made it so hard.

“A steady downpour will allow the water to soak into the ground but it looks at the moment like we are going to get a week or so of mainly showery weather.”

According to Gerald, there was only 5.88mm of rainfall in the Ely area during April and March combined, so the 6mm in June has eclipsed both months.

Gerald told the Ely Standard that total rainfall for the year to the end of May stood at about 120mm, although the region’s average should have seen about 170-180mm.

The Met Office said that this spring was the driest for more than 20 years in some areas.

Across England and Wales spring rainfall was 86.9 mm, which is just 45 per cent of the long-term average.

East Anglia was the driest district in the UK with just 28.1mm of rain, only 21 per cent of the long-term average.

The lack of rain in East Anglia made it the driest for 101 years, beating the previous record of 51.9 mm in 1996.