2012: Englands wettest year

The Met office has just released details on last years extreme weather and revealed that 2012 was the 2nd wettest year on record for the entire UK but the wettest on record for England alone.

 

2012 has indeed been a wet one, apart from a few brief moments of summer during the Olympics and Paralymics (that was lucky) and a few weeks in March!

It is hard to believe that at the start of the year many areas of England were on the brink of drought after several dry winters. But in the most dramatic turn around from drought to wet weather ever seen 2012 was definitely a record breaker.

 

The Met Office announced that the total rainfall for the UK during 2012 was 1,330.7mm (523.9in), just 6.6mm short of the record set in 2000. Across the UK areas were affected from flooding across the summer with numerous places seeing floods happen more than once in a month! The large amount of rainfall refilled low reservoirs and saturated the ground so when winter arrived the ground was to sodden to cope with the winter storms which has caused major floods across many parts of Southern England over Christmas. The floods will be set to continue while the ground is so sodden and river levels are high, so if any prolonged rain returns flooding is likely.

The next few weeks are set to be drier but the chance of rain is never to far away.

 

The Environment Agency said almost 8,000 properties in England and Wales were flooded during 2012 and it sent more than 200,000 warnings to households and businesses. There was many occasions when more than 20 flood warnings and hundreds of flood alerts were announced by the EA.

 

The Met Office also warned that it is a global trend around the world with extreme rainfall events and I find it quite scary that 4 of the top 5 wettest years across the UK since records began were in the last 12 years, in 2000, 2002, 2008 and 2012. Is our weather getting worse?

 

Well there you have it my first environmentally topical blog.

I'll post another on the UKs extreme weather soon.

 

Adam Dargan

 

This is my hometown which was flooded 3 times in 2 weeks in June