As is so often said “the devil is in the detail”, and as with all things relating to both weather and rain the details tell the full story. Furthermore, you would be correct in feeling like we have had a cold winter, not a wet one.
When we look at the rainfall for autumn and winter of this year we have had 962mm against an average of 759mm and that is 27 per cent above the average. Interestingly enough, we were right on our rainfall average after the first five months of the autumn-winter period. Furthermore, the rainfall for the first eight months of this year was 1222mm which is only 79 per cent of the average.
What happened in August you ask, well, we had the wettest month of the year so far getting a huge 265mm or 457 per cent above average. It only took nine wet days for this rain to fall and normally we could expect 16-19 wet days. Hence the feeling of a dry winter.
To put 2025 in context let’s us have a look at what happened in 2024. Last autumn-winter was even wetter than this year when we had a whopping 1123mm which put us at 48 per cent over the average for the six months. Last year our rainfall for the first eight months was a huge 1845mm, this figure easily exceeded our twelve-month average of 1554mm.
Now for some quirky rain details of interest. Up to the end of August this year we have had 107 rainy days with the wettest day being Wednesdays whilst the driest day is Tuesdays. Last year it rained on 115 days, and we got the most rain on Wednesdays and least on Mondays. Yippee, we got an extra eight sunny days.
You would be forgiven thinking you had moved to the Mediterranean where they enjoy dry summers and wet winters. So, the next question is “will the Mediterranean pattern continue”?
I will give you a complete reply which will be 100 per cent accurate in January.
