I’m sitting at my desk looking out into a light mist but with bright blue sky evident above. It’s rather weird because we’ve just endured a warm festive period with light southerly to south-westerly winds bringing in a very comfortable 14-17°C. We’ve not even had a hint of frost and even this week is still forecast at 9-15°C through the day with a minimum night temperature of 3°C. Even as I approach the ninth anniversary since selling my landscaping businesses I still get flashbacks to the days when we’d turn in for work when all around us was frozen solid (before as well as after Christmas) although I do remember, on occasions, it being mild too.
2012 was a weird year for weather and I remember all too vividly how we fought to allow professional gardeners to be allowed to use a hosepipe only for the heavens to open the very next week. It’s been very wet since. William Hill are getting ready to payout on 2012 proving to be the wettest on record (beating 2000 1337.3mm). At one point in 2012 William Hill were offering 100/1 that it would be the wettest year and now offer just 14/1 that 2013 will break the record.
But despite all the rain, it is 5/1 that we see a hosepipe ban enforced in the Thames region at any point in the year. Better news for sun worshippers is you can get 8/1 that we will see a temperatures of 100f or more at some point this summer.
“2012 has been a year of weather extremes and the odds suggest that we come be in for more of the same in 2013,” said William Hill spokesman Rupert Adams.
Other odds for potential weather events in 2013:
Wet
Hose Pipe Ban in Thames Region: 5/1
Wettest Year On Record: 14/1
Rain Everyday Of Wimbledon Championship: 33/1
Hot
UK record hottest temperature record (38.5c) to be broken: 12/1
Temperature to hit 100f: 8/1
Hottest year on record: 10/1
Cold
Coldest temp in England to be broken this winter: 6/1
Parliament to be closed by health & safety as a result of snow and ice: 66/1
Big Ben to fail to chime for weather reasons before april 30th: 100/1
Thames to freeze over between Tower & London Bridge: 250/1
Snow
White Christmas 2013: 5/1 Aberdeen, 6/1 Glasgow, 6/1 Manchester, 8/1 London
Economic climate
I don’t know about you but I’m feeling a quiet confidence about the coming twelve months? First of all the US have (potentially) stopped their economy from falling over the Fiscal Cliff. A compromise deal was reached on New Year’s Eve.
Time will tell whether the hype surrounding this game changing agreement has indeed got substance but I think it was clever to use New Year’s Eve as the cliff edge. There’s plenty of political point scoring to be done yet.
We now have a rather symbolical financial fresh start on the very first day of 2013. As I type the Footsie 100 index has soared by over 1.5% and rests just below 6,000 resistance. Whether it can leap through it or drop back is all down the whether the US deal is workable: it’ll take traders a few days to digest the news.
I’ll be keeping a beady eye on the landscape industry to get a raw feel for how sentiment is changing. It’s a buyers market at the moment and landscapers, gardeners and designers will be under pressure to fight for their market share. One thing I will be keen to see is a fair fight.
I remember reading the so-called industry associations retrospectively telling their members not to lower prices and to maintain value. Well that plan failed miserably and it eventually dawned that their members were flesh and blood just like the majority of industry professionals out there. Now the [associations] campaign focus is about killing-off the non-VAT registered practitioner (they are less professional apparently) so it clears the way for them to pick up the cream of the work.
Last year I sensed that Marshalls were feeling optimistic about trading so I will be keeping an eye on their progress too. I suspect the milder weather will have enabled installers to maintain a steady pace in the run-in to Christmas. Obviously the floods will have had an effect too so it will be interesting to see if the latter will negate the former. Look for domestic installer lead-in times in their trading update on Friday.
Source: Landscape Juice – William Hill Offer 5/1 on there being A Hosepipe Ban in 2013
