England and Wales Climate – September 2026 Update

The Thames frost fairs end (Little Ice Age)

The Thames froze solid at London at least 24 times between 1400 and 1814, giving rise to 'frost fairs' on the ice (1608, 1683-84, 1716, 1739-40, 1789, 1814) during the 'Little Ice Age' (~14th century to ~1850). It has never frozen solid enough for a fair since.

Historic UK, The History Press

The Bristol Channel flood of 1607

Britain's deadliest recorded flood drowns both shores of the Bristol Channel on 30 January 1607, killing an estimated 500-2,000 people and inundating about 200 square miles of farmland up to 14 miles inland - the Somerset Levels in England and the Gwent Levels in south Wales alike.

Wikipedia, Phys.org

Post-WWII industrial expansion begins

After the Second World War, coal and oil use grew rapidly across Europe, North America and the Soviet Union. Global sulphur dioxide emissions rose from about 30 to about 130 million tonnes a year by 1980, and the sulphate haze they formed masked part of the greenhouse warming underneath - the effect known as 'global dimming'.

Klimont et al. 2013

The Great Smog of London

A temperature inversion traps coal smoke over London from 5 to 9 December 1952. Sulphur dioxide from domestic fires and industry turns to sulphuric acid in the fog; initial estimates put the death toll near 4,000, and modern work puts it closer to 12,000. It led directly to the Clean Air Act of 1956.

Britannica, Wikipedia

The Lynmouth flood disaster

On the night of 15-16 August 1952, around 90 million tons of rain falls on an already saturated Exmoor. The East and West Lyn rivers tear through Lynmouth in north Devon carrying boulders and debris, destroying over 100 buildings and killing 34 people.

Wikipedia, Visit Lynton & Lynmouth

The North Sea Flood of 1953

The night of 31 January 1953 kills 531 people across the UK - 307 in England, 19 in eastern Scotland, and 135 when the Stranraer-Larne ferry Princess Victoria sinks in the North Channel. A storm surge running 3m above expected sea level breaches sea defences in 1,200 places, floods 140,000 acres and forces 32,000 from their homes. Britain's worst natural disaster of the 20th century.

The Conversation, Royal Meteorological Society, Wikipedia, Wikipedia (2)

The Gunnersbury tornado

An F3 tornado cuts a 19km path through west London on 8 December 1954, tearing through Gunnersbury and Acton and injuring more than thirty people - one of the strongest tornadoes recorded in Britain.

Wikipedia

The UK's wettest day on record

Severe thunderstorms over southern England on 18 July 1955 drop 279.4mm of rain on Martinstown in Dorset in a single day - still the highest daily rainfall ever recorded anywhere in the United Kingdom.

Met Office Archive, Wikipedia

UK Clean Air Act

England and Wales were the Act's core jurisdiction from 1956, gaining smoke control areas and curbs on domestic coal burning together. Northern Ireland was outside it entirely and did not legislate until 1964.

The National Archives, Clean Air Act 1956, The Clean Air Act 1964 (Appointed Day)…

The Big Freeze of 1962-63

The winter of 1962-63 freezes Britain from late December to early March - rivers, lakes and even stretches of sea ice over, and it is the coldest winter since at least 1895 in every UK meteorological district. In Central England, where the record runs back to 1659, only 1683-84 and 1739-40 have been colder, and January 1963 at -2.1°C remains the coldest month there since January 1814.

Wikipedia, Wikipedia (2), Royal Meteorological Society, Norfolk Live

Agung eruption

Agung's eruption in Bali put a veil of sulphate haze into the stratosphere that cooled global temperature by about 0.3°C over 1963-66.

Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program, NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory

The Great Flood of 1968

A deep trough brings exceptionally heavy rain and thunderstorms to south-east England in mid-September 1968, worst on Sunday the 15th. More than 14,000 properties flood across Surrey, Sussex, Kent and the Thames tributaries, following one of the UK's wettest summers on record.

Great Flood of 1968

The 1976 UK drought

Much of England and Wales took under 65% of average rainfall across the 16 dry months from May 1975 to August 1976, with parts of southern England under 55% - the driest such spell in over 200 years.

Royal Meteorological Society, Met Office, Royal Meteorological Society (2)

The North Sea flood of 1978

A surge on the night of 11-12 January 1978 floods the east coast again, twenty-five years after 1953. Norfolk and the Humber take the worst of it, and the defences rebuilt after 1953 are tested for the first time.

Wikipedia

Global SO2 emissions peak

Global sulphur dioxide emissions peak at about 130 million tonnes a year, then begin a long decline as Europe, North America and Japan clean up their air. As the aerosol mask thins, the rate of global warming picks up through the 1980s.

Klimont et al. 2013

The late April snowstorm of 1981

An exceptionally late snowstorm crosses Britain between 23 and 26 April 1981, dropping over 30cm widely across the Midlands, southern England, Wales and the north west. Drifts reach six metres in Derbyshire and Staffordshire, and Birmingham's temperature fails to climb above 3°C for three days.

Wikipedia

The 1981 tornado outbreak

On 23 November 1981, 104 confirmed tornadoes touch down across England and Wales in a single day - the largest tornado outbreak ever recorded in Europe. The worst damage is in Leicester, where hundreds of homes are hit and 24 people are injured as part of a school collapses.

Wikipedia, Wikipedia (2)

The Thames Barrier becomes operational

Built in direct response to the 1953 flood, the Thames Barrier's ten steel gates begin protecting 125 square kilometres of central London in 1982. It has closed over 200 times in its first forty years - nine successive tides in 2003 alone - and the rising closure rate is one of the clearest local measures of sea-level rise.

Carbon Brief, London Museum

El Chichón eruption

A sulphur-rich eruption in Mexico whose aerosol cloud stayed in the stratosphere for more than two years, cooling the Northern Hemisphere by about 0.2°C.

Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program

The Great Storm of 1987

An unforecast hurricane-force windstorm on the night of 15-16 October 1987 killed 18 people in England and felled an estimated 15 million trees - the UK's most famous modern storm, remembered partly for the Met Office forecaster who, hours earlier, told a viewer not to worry about a hurricane.

Wikipedia

The Big Freeze of January 1987

A Siberian easterly buries eastern and southern England between 11 and 14 January 1987. Over 50cm of snow falls across South East England, locally 75cm, and Caldecott in Rutland drops to -23.3°C on the 13th - with daytime maxima of -6 to -8°C across much of the south.

Wikipedia, The Weather Outlook

Daytime warming catches up with the night-led pattern

Across 1961-90, 81% of the world's land saw nights warming faster than days. Across 1991-2020 the pattern reversed: 70% saw days warming faster, as the industrial haze that had been dimming daytime sunshine was cleaned up. The study compares two fixed thirty-year windows; measured as a turning point, this site's own global series turns around 1982.

Zhong et al. 2023

The Burns' Day Storm

An intense depression crosses southern Scotland on 25 January 1990, driving severe gales across England and Wales in broad daylight. 47 people are killed - more than twice the toll of the Great Storm of 1987 - around 3 million trees come down and 500,000 people lose power. Damage was heaviest south of a line from west Wales to Suffolk.

Met Office, Royal Meteorological Society

August 1990 UK heatwave breaks 79-year record

The August 1990 heatwave (37.1°C at Cheltenham, 3 August) breaks the UK's national temperature record for the first time in nearly 80 years.

Wikipedia, history.co.uk, Met Office

Positive NAO phase dominates the 1990s

A positive NAO splits England and Wales in two: the western uplands take the strengthened Atlantic flow and turn it into rain, while central, southern and eastern England sit in their lee and show a far less consistent response - there the separate East Atlantic pattern matters more for rainfall than the NAO.

Hurrell 1995, Science, Atmosphere, 2021, Frontiers, 2022NAO Tracker

The Towyn coastal flood

Gale-force winds meet a high spring tide on 26 February 1990 and breach the sea wall at Towyn on the north Wales coast. Ten square kilometres flood, 2,800 properties are affected and around 6,000 people are evacuated - one of the largest peacetime evacuations in Wales.

North Wales Live, SurgeWatch

Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation flips to a warm phase

The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation flipped to a warm phase in 1995. For the UK it is one of the background rhythms sitting underneath the warming trend: warm AMO phases are associated with warmer North Atlantic surface waters on the UK's doorstep, and have been linked to wetter summers in parts of north-west Europe. It is a natural cycle of roughly 60-70 years, so it shifts the baseline rather than driving the long-term trend - which matters when reading any UK record set since the mid-1990s.

Learn more →

The autumn 2000 floods

2000 is the wettest year on record for England and Wales at 1,215mm, and its autumn the wettest since the series began in 1766. Around 10,000 properties flooded.

Unda, Met Office

August 2003 European heatwave (UK)

The 2003 heatwave caused 2,139 excess deaths across England and Wales between 4 and 13 August - about 16% above normal mortality, rising to 40% above normal in London. The UK's first 38.5°C reading was taken at Brogdale near Faversham, Kent, on the 10th.

Met Office / ONS, Impact of the 2003 heat wave on daily…

The Boscastle flash flood

About 185mm of rain falls on the hills above Boscastle in Cornwall on 16 August 2004 - some 75mm of it in two hours, a whole August's worth. River levels rise two metres in an hour and tear through the village. No one is killed, but the flood becomes Britain's textbook flash-flood case study.

Wikipedia, RMetS MetLink

The Birmingham tornado

An IF3 tornado tears through the southern and eastern suburbs of Birmingham on the afternoon of 28 July 2005, stripping roofs and felling trees along its track. It remains the costliest tornado ever recorded in Great Britain.

Wikipedia

The Carlisle flood of 2005

175mm of rain falls on Cumbria in 36 hours in January 2005, putting much of Carlisle under water and killing three people. The River Eden's peak here stood as the record until Storm Desmond beat it by over half a metre ten years later.

Cumberland Council, Whitehaven News

Summer 2007 UK floods

England and Wales record 414.1mm of rain from May to July 2007 - their wettest such spell since the series began in 1766. The flooding that followed killed 13 people, inundated more than 55,000 homes and businesses and cost about £6.5 billion.

Wikipedia / GOV.UK flood cost report, Met Office

The November 2009 Cumbria floods

Seathwaite in Cumbria records 314.4mm of rain in 24 hours in November 2009 - an England record at the time - and Cockermouth and Workington flood severely. The record stood six years, until Storm Desmond's 341.4mm at nearby Honister Pass.

Whitehaven News, Met Office

Negative NAO blocking cluster, 2009-2013

December 2010 was the second coldest December in the Central England record back to 1659, missing the 1890 record by 0.1°C, and Llysdinam in Powys fell to -17.5°C - both during the UK's coldest December since Met Office records began.

4byo, Met Office, WikipediaNAO Tracker

Start of the sustained rise in UK heatwave frequency

England and Wales' own Heatwave Days count rose from a decade mean of 3.62 days in the 2000s to 8.44 in the 2010s, and 14.22 so far in the 2020s - the same sustained acceleration seen UK-wide.

Met Office, State of the UK Climate

The December 2013 North Sea storm surge

Spring tides, deep low pressure and gale-force winds drive the worst surge on the east coast since 1953 on 5 December 2013, hitting Hunstanton, Wells, Cley and Hemsby. Damage across Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex reaches an estimated £1 billion, but modern defences largely hold and no lives are lost - though cliffs collapse at Hemsby and homes are lost to the sea.

ITV Anglia, Frontiers in Marine Science (2015)

UK's post-2013 warmth acceleration

8 of England and Wales' 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 2013, with 2025 the warmest of all - the same post-2013 acceleration seen across the UK.

Met Office, State of the UK Climate

Somerset Levels floods, winter 2013-14

About 100 million m³ of floodwater covered 65 km² of the Somerset Levels through the winter of 2013-14 - the largest flood event on record there, with some communities cut off for weeks. Worst affected: Somerset, Devon, Dorset and Cornwall in the south west, and the Thames Valley in the south east.

Met Office

The 2013-14 winter coastal storms

A relentless run of Atlantic storms batters the south-west coast through the winter of 2013-14. Waves overtop defences across Cornwall, Devon and Dorset, over 7,000 homes and businesses flood, and on 4-5 February the sea tears away the main railway line at Dawlish, cutting Cornwall and much of Devon off by rail for two months.

Met Office, Earth Surface Processes and Landforms

England and Wales' wettest winter since 1766

Winter 2013-14 (December to February) brought England and Wales 456 mm of rain - 175% of average and the wettest winter in the England and Wales Precipitation series since it began in 1766.

Met Office, Kendon et al. 2015, England and Wales Precipitation series

The Boxing Day floods (Storm Eva)

Storm Eva drops a month's rain in a day onto ground already saturated by Storm Desmond three weeks earlier. On 26 December 2015 around 4,000 homes and 2,000 businesses flood across northern England - 2,200 homes in Greater Manchester alone - with parts of Leeds, Calderdale and York under up to 1.8m of water.

Wikipedia, Verisk

Storm Desmond, December 2015

New UK all-time records for 24-hour rainfall (341.1mm at Honister, Cumbria) and 48-hour rainfall (405mm at Thirlmere, Cumbria). Over 5,200 properties flooded across Cumbria and Lancashire; worst-hit towns include Carlisle, Kendal, Keswick, Cockermouth.

World Weather Attribution

2015-2025: the eleven warmest years on record

Globally, the eleven warmest years on record have all happened since 2015. England and Wales's own record is a looser fit - seven of its eleven warmest fall in that span, with 2014, 2011, 2007 and 2006 outside it. Its warmest year is 2022.

Learn more →

The Beast from the East

The Beast from the East produced the heaviest widespread snowfall England and Wales had seen in years, deepest at 57cm in Gloucestershire where Storm Emma met the Siberian airmass head-on. 2018's snow total ranks 24th of the 44 years in this site's snow record - a severe fortnight rather than a snowy year. It followed a sudden stratospheric warming in mid-February that split the polar vortex.

Wikipedia, Wikipedia (2)Polar Vortex Tracker

Low-sulphur shipping fuel rule (IMO 2020)

New international shipping rules cut the sulphur allowed in ship fuel from 3.5% to 0.5% almost overnight, removing about 8 million tonnes of sulphur dioxide a year. With less sulphate haze over the oceans, it may have added around 0.1°C of warming by 2023-24.

Gettelman et al. 2024

February 2020 floods (Storms Ciara & Dennis)

Wales has its wettest February since records began in 1862, and Storms Ciara and Dennis bring the worst flooding since December 1979 - often to the same communities. The Taff at Pontypridd reaches its highest level since records began in 1968 and the Usk breaks its 1994 record; over 3,000 properties flood, at a cost above £81 million.

Natural Resources Wales

The UK's wettest February on record, 2020

February 2020 was the wettest February for England and Wales together in this site's Met Office record from 1900 - 179.3mm, nearly three times their 1961-90 average - as Storms Ciara, Dennis and Jorge followed one another in on a strong, southward-shifted jet stream. It beat the 149.6mm of February 1923.

Davies et al. (2021), Carbon Brief / Met Office, NOAA CPCPolar Vortex / AO

Storm Arwen

A rare Met Office red warning is issued as Storm Arwen drives northerly gales down the east coast on 26 November 2021. Around 225,000 Scottish properties lose power, some for over a week, three people are killed across the UK, and Scotland's forests take large-scale damage.

Wikipedia, Scottish Government

Storm Christoph floods, January 2021

Storm Christoph's heaviest rain falls across north Wales and northern England on 19-21 January 2021, forcing around 2,000 families from their homes in Manchester, Merseyside and Wrexham. The Dee at Bangor-on-Dee reaches a record level, and Honister in Cumbria records 123.8 mm of rain in a day.

Met Office, FloodList

The UK's first 40°C day

Both nations set records in the same spell: England took the UK past 40°C for the first time with 40.3°C at Coningsby on 19 July 2022, and Wales set a new national record of 37.1°C at Hawarden Airport, Flintshire, the day before.

Met Office review (via Carbon Brief), Met Office, Wikipedia, Met Office (2)

2022 South East England drought / hosepipe bans

England's driest July since 1935 left Bewl Water reservoir (Kent/East Sussex) exposed; South East Water imposed a usage ban across Kent and Sussex from 12 August 2022 - the region's first hosepipe ban since 2012.

Met Office

The New Year Mersey floods

170mm of rain falls in 18 hours across Greater Manchester over New Year 2024-25, and the Mersey reaches 3.71m at Northenden - its highest level in 66 years. A major incident is declared on 1 January, and more than 1,000 people leave their homes in Didsbury, Northenden and Harpurhey.

Greater Manchester Combined Authority, Wikipedia