Met Office confirms wettest June in over a century

Provisional Met Office figures for June show double the average amount of rain has fallen, making it the wettest June since records began in 1910.

This is the second record breaking month of rainfall this year, with April also topping the rankings. The period from April to June is also the wettest recorded for the UK.

It is also the second dullest June on record with just 119.2 hours of sunshine, narrowly missing out on the record of 115.4 hours set in 1987. To complete the disappointing picture, it has also been the coolest June since 1991 with a mean temperature of 12.3 deg C.

Unsettled weather has never been from the UK during the past three months, with only the latter half of May seeing a spell of prolonged fine weather.

Movements in the track of the jet stream, a narrow band of fast flowing westerly winds high in the atmosphere, have contributed to the weather we have seen.

This June has seen periods of heavy and prolonged rain, as well as short but exceptionally heavy showers.

The total UK rainfall was 145.3mm – exactly twice as much as you would normally expect compared to the 1971-2000 average. This beats the previous record of 136.2 mm set in 2007.

Looking at individual countries, it has been the wettest June on record for Wales and Northern Ireland, the second wettest in England, and the eighth wettest in Scotland.

Many areas have seen extremely high rainfall – with 83 (out of 237) observation sites marking their wettest June on record. Some of these aren’t significant as they have very short recording histories, just a year in some cases, but others have been operating much longer – Otterbourne in Hampshire been operating for 119 years.

One of the key features of the month has been that the far north west of the UK, traditionally the wettest part of the country, has been remarkably dry.

Up until quite late in the month, a few stations in this area were below their record lowest rainfall amounts – but they just missed the record books with rain falling in the last few days of the month.

Met Office provisional June figures

	mean temperature		sunshine duration		rainfall
	Actual	Difference from 1971-2000 average	Actual	% of 1971-2000 average	Actual	% of 1971-2000 average
	degC	degC	hours	%	mm	%
UK	12.3	-0.3	119.2	70	145.3	200
England	13.4	-0.2	121	67	142.6	227
Wales	12.7	0	120.6	71	205	238
Scotland	10.4	-0.6	119.4	77	129.4	152
N Ireland	12	-0.4	97.4	64	169.2	235
England & Wales	13.3	-0.2	121	68	151.2	229
England N	12.5	-0.3	105.9	63	162.5	234
England S	13.9	-0.2	129	69	132.1	222

Current or previous wettest years on record are:

· UK: (Previous) 136.2 mm in 2007

· England: 146.0 mm in 2007

· Wales: (Previous) 183.1mm in 1998

· Scotland: 155.0 mm in 1938

· Northern Ireland: (Previous) 152.6 mm in 1912.

Average UK conditions (1971-2000):

· Mean temperature: 12.6 deg C

· Rainfall: 72.6mm

· Sunshine: 169.4 hours

Related articles

• Wettest June sees double rainfall (itv.com)
• June seeps into record books as wettest month (guardian.co.uk)
• UK News: Record rainfall makes June the wettest since 1910 (walesonline.co.uk)