Across the UK, the relentless rain and soggy weather since the beginning of January have broken records for the wettest start to the year, with some parts of the country complaining that they haven’t seen the sun since 2025!
But will the rain ever stop? And is this weather linked to climate change?
Rain has fallen somewhere in the UK every day for weeks on end, with more than 100 flood warnings in place across the country and further downpours expected.
This has been driven by a succession of weather systems: storms Goretti, Ingrid, and Chandra battered the UK in January, creating increasingly saturated ground which has led to large-scale flooding in many areas.
This pattern has been fuelled by a southward shift in the jet stream (a fast-moving band of wind high in the atmosphere that helps to steer weather systems across the Atlantic) which has directed successive areas of low pressure towards the UK. This has also affected Spain and Portugal, where floods have had catastrophic impacts.
While the low pressure systems in the UK have not experienced conditions as intense as other countries, they have still been significant enough to break daily rainfall records in some areas.
Scientists believe that fossil fuel pollution is making the jet stream more erratic, allowing extreme weather systems to remain over the same areas for prolonged periods. These so-called ‘blocking systems’ are predicted to become more frequent as global emissions continue to rise.
At the same time, rising global temperatures are intensifying rainfall. As warmer air can hold around 7% more moisture for every one degree Celsius rise in temperature, heavier rainfall becomes more likely. This has contributed to increasingly wet UK winters which have been recorded roughly two decades earlier than climate models had predicted.
Scientists project that climate change will be responsible for more wet winters and drier summers in the UK.
However, the recent weather has meant that England is now free from drought for the first time since May as water sources such as reservoirs and aquifers are slowly reaching healthier levels.
So yes, the sun will return (eventually). But the bigger question is whether this winter’s relentless downpours are simply a one-off. As the climate continues to warm, the UK may need to prepare not just for more rain, but for a new normal.