If it feels like the rain just hasn’t stopped this year, you might be on to something. Cardinham in Cornwall has recorded some rain every single day of the year so far.
Katesbridge (County Down) and Aboyne (Aberdeenshire) recorded nearly four times their January average rainfall, and history is repeating itself this month. We’re not even at the half way point of the month and Aboyne has already had well over double the February average rainfall.
As wet as this winter has been, it’s unlikely to beat the rainfall of the wettest winter on record, the winter of 2013-14.
In the south-west England and South Wales region, data from the Met Office shows that 691mm of rain fell then, causing widespread severe flooding.
Combining the figures for December 2025 and January 2026 gives us 415mm, but already the record looks to be far out of reach.
One parallel between this winter and the winter of 2013-14 is the damage done to the main railway line at Dawlish that connects southwest England to the rest of the rail network.
You might remember in February 2014 that the track was left dangling precariously high in the air as storms washed away the protecting sea wall. This winter has also seen a section of sea wall collapse due to the onslaught of storms causing some disruption.
Why so wet?
Around 17 January a blocking area of high pressure developed in Scandinavia and it’s still there to this day.
This has prevented areas of low pressure from moving beyond the UK, so they’ve become slow-moving, bringing very wet weather, with south-west winds to the south of the UK and south-easterly winds to the north of the UK. This wind pattern is responsible for the distribution of rain.
It’s worth pointing out that it hasn’t been wet everywhere.
North-west England and west Scotland had a much drier January than normal, and parts of the Highlands have only recorded 1mm of rain so far this month.
The Scandinavian blocking area of high pressure is finally going to budge this week, allowing our weather to turn colder with some hill snow in the north later this week.
Next week our weather patterns will become more typical for the time of year with the Atlantic jet stream returning to the north-west of Scotland, rather than taking an unusual position near Morocco.
There will still be rain around as we’d expect in winter, but some of the wettest weather will return to west Scotland. The rain won’t be as extreme in east Scotland. In the southwest of England, it won’t rain every single day, there will be drier and sunnier days between our weather systems.
Heading towards the end of February, there are hints that an area of high pressure may visit our shores, bringing some more settled weather conditions. It’s a long way off, but it’s the least we deserve given just how wet and dull it’s been over recent weeks.
