rainlessness

This summer’s heat and rainlessness, which rivals the devastating 1988 drought, has left crops withering in the fields and farmers trying to calculate their losses.

The summer has been wondrous again in these islands—four or five months, from April 1st, of almost merciless fine weather—a rainlessness absolute and without precedent.

Two months of rainlessness had withered 29% or 817,000,000 bu. of the corn crop, a cash loss of about $775,000,000.

There had been rain, torrential rain, just before the Sarratts arrived, so that the river was full and noisy, and all the little becks clattering down the fell, in their haste to reach the lake, were boasting to the summer air, as though in forty-eight hours of rainlessness they would not be as dry and dumb as ever again.

I think this is more likely to be the truth: Old-fashioned gardens used low plant densities to survive inevitable spells of rainlessness.