Are UK winters getting wetter? Rainfall records and what they mean for farming

Key figures

• +23%more rain in the average UK winter over the last 15 years (2011/12 to 2025/26) than in 1961 to 1990: 373.5 mm against 302.8 mm.
• 539.9 mmof rain fell across the UK in winter 2013/14, the most in any winter since the series starts in 1836/37. England had 401.0 mm, also a record.
• −25%the fall in England's wheat area for harvest 2020, after the 5th wettest autumn on record. It was the smallest wheat area in Defra's series, which starts in 1983.
• +19%the rise in England's wheat area for harvest 2014, straight after the record wet winter. The autumn before had been dry enough to get the crop in.

Are UK winters getting wetter?

England rainfall, December to February, every winter from 1836/37 to 2025/26 (mm). The darker bars are the winters covered below.

Winter totalAverage of the previous 30 winters

Source: Met Office HadUK-Grid areal series for England, seasonal totals. Our analysis.

Download the figures, England and UK winter and autumn rainfall, 1837 to 2026 (CSV)

In the 30 winters to 1865/66, England averaged 181 mm. In the 30 winters to 2025/26 it averaged 248 mm. A straight line fitted through all 190 winters rises by 34.7 mm a century, and over the last 40 winters the slope is steeper, at 12.2 mm a decade.

The change has not been smooth. The 1961 to 1990 average for England was 222.2 mm and the 1991 to 2020 average 239.6 mm, a rise of 8%. Most of the jump since then has come in the last 15 years, which include five of England's ten wettest winters. Dry winters have not gone away (five of the last 15 came in below the 1961 to 1990 average), but the wet end of the range has moved.

Autumns are wetter too, though by less. England's September to November average was 228.6 mm in 1961 to 1990 and 250.8 mm in 1991 to 2020, up 10%. That matters more to arable farmers than the winter figure, for reasons set out below.

Scotland is the exception to the recent trend. Its winters jumped in the 1990s (the 1991 to 2020 average is 21% above 1961 to 1990, more than double England's rise) but have not risen further since: the slope over the last 40 winters is slightly negative, at minus 3.0 mm a decade.

The wettest winters on record

The ten wettest UK winters since 1836/37, December to February rainfall (mm).

• 2013/14539.9
• 2015/16504.9
• 1994/95498.2
• 1989/90482.2
• 2019/20474.7
• 2023/24461.8
• 1876/77458.3
• 1914/15450.8
• 1868/69439.5
• 2006/07434.8

Source: Met Office HadUK-Grid areal series for the UK, seasonal totals, ranked by us. The Met Office publishes its own ranked tables, which match.

Seven of the ten are from 1989/90 or later. England's top ten has a slightly different order, because the big northern and western winters count for less there: 2013/14 (401.0 mm), 1914/15, 1876/77, 1989/90, 2023/24, 1994/95, 1868/69, 2025/26, 2020/21 and 2019/20. Seven of those are also from 1989/90 or later, including last winter, 2025/26, in 8th place.

Region by region

Average winter rainfall (mm) and where three standout winters rank in each Met Office area.

Every area in the table is wetter in winter than it was in 1961 to 1990. The biggest rises over the last 15 winters are in north-west England and north Wales (+28%) and in Scotland (+27%), with the south-east close behind at +25%. East Anglia, the driest district in the series and the core of Defra's Eastern region, which grows more wheat than any other English region, is up 18%.

The standout winters were not wet everywhere. 2015/16 set records across the north and west of Britain, yet in the south-east it ranked only 37th, and East Anglia had 97% of its 1991 to 2020 average. 2013/14 was the reverse, a southern winter: the wettest on record in both the south-east and the south-west.

What wet weather does to farming

Area of wheat and spring barley in England at 1 June, 1983 to 2026 (million hectares). The shaded years followed very wet autumns.

WheatSpring barley

Source: Defra, Cereal and oilseed areas in England at 1 June, June Survey of Agriculture. Figures from 2010 cover commercial holdings only.

Most English wheat is sown in autumn and harvested the following summer. If the ground is too wet to drill in October and November, farmers sow late or hold the field over for a spring crop. Defra's June Survey shows the result in the summer: wheat area falls and spring barley, the usual fallback, rises.

Since 1984 there have been six harvests where England's wheat area fell by more than 10% on the year before. Four of them (2001, 2013, 2020 and 2024) followed autumns that rank among the wettest in the Met Office record. The other two, 1993 and 2009, followed autumns that were wetter than the 1961 to 1990 average but nowhere near the record, so rain is at most part of the story in those years.

Across the 43 harvests from 1984 to 2026, the change in England's wheat area follows the previous autumn's rainfall quite closely: the correlation is minus 0.51, where 0 would mean no link and minus 1 a perfect one. With the winter's rainfall the figure is 0.08, which is no link at all. Our reading is that winter rain decides how much damage is done to crops already in the ground, and autumn rain decides whether they get planted at all.

Wet years also cut how much each hectare yields. The UK wheat yield in 2012 was 6.66 tonnes a hectare and in 2020 6.96, the two lowest in Defra's UK series since 1999. Rain is not the only cause of a poor yield, and this page does not try to separate it from the rest.

Autumn 2000: the wettest autumn on record

England had 443.7 mm of rain between September and November 2000, the most in any autumn since 1836 and 194% of the 1961 to 1990 average. It was also the wettest autumn on record for the UK (509.6 mm) and for Wales. Every English district in the Met Office series had its wettest autumn except East Anglia, where it was second.

Defra's figures for harvest 2001 show what followed. England's wheat area fell 21.3% to 1,540,555 hectares and winter barley fell 22.1%, while spring barley rose 86.5% to 449,887 hectares. UK wheat production fell 30.7% to 11.58 million tonnes.

2012: the wet year

In the Met Office's current series, 2012 is England's second wettest calendar year since 1836, with 1,125.9 mm, behind only 1872. April and June 2012 were both the wettest on record in England for their month. Summer 2012, June to August, was the UK's third wettest since 1836, with 378.8 mm, and the wettest since 1912; England had 351.2 mm, also third. For the UK as a whole 2012 now ranks 5th, with 1,329.6 mm. Ranks move as the Met Office revises its series and later years are added, so press coverage from early 2013 may give different positions.

Harvest 2012 gave a UK wheat yield of 6.66 tonnes a hectare, the lowest since Defra's UK series starts in 1999. The rain then carried on through the drilling season: England had 463.9 mm from September to December 2012, the 8th wettest such spell on record. England's wheat area for harvest 2013 fell 18.9% to 1,504,571 hectares and spring barley rose 94%, nearly doubling.

Winter 2013/14: the wettest on record

The UK had 539.9 mm of rain from December 2013 to February 2014, 157% of the 1991 to 2020 average and the most in any winter since 1836/37. England had 401.0 mm (167% of average), also a record, and January 2014 was England's wettest January, at 159.9 mm. The south of England took the worst of it: the south-east and central south had 513.6 mm, more than double its average at 221%, and the south-west and south Wales 691.2 mm. Both are records.

The storms and floods of 2013/14

That winter's storms have no official names, because the Met Office and Met Éireann only began naming storms in September 2015. The Met Office's 2014 report on the storms and floods is no longer on its website; the monthly figures here come from its current series. Across the UK, January 2014 brought 186.7 mm, the 3rd wettest January, after 185.6 mm in December. February added 167.6 mm.

For arable farming, the record winter did less harm than the figures suggest. Autumn 2013 had been ordinary, 256.2 mm in England and 74th of 190, so most winter crops were already sown. England's wheat area for harvest 2014 rose 19.4% to 1,796,730 hectares, and UK wheat production rose 39% to 16.61 million tonnes. Defra's national figures cannot show the farms that were under water that winter, and no official series records the land lost to flooding.

Winter 2015/16: the north and west

This was the UK's second wettest winter, with 504.9 mm. Scotland had 736.7 mm and Wales 725.4 mm, both records. North-west England and north Wales set a record too, at 689.3 mm. December 2015, at 216.3 mm, is the UK's wettest December and its second wettest month of any kind since 1836, behind October 1903.

It was the first winter of named storms. The Met Office's record of Storm Desmond, on 5 and 6 December 2015, gives 341.4 mm of rain at Honister Pass in Cumbria in 24 hours, a UK record, and 5,200 homes flooded across Lancashire and Cumbria.

The cropping figures barely moved. England's wheat area for harvest 2016 was 0.5% down on the year before, and autumn 2015 had been on the dry side in England (106th of 190). UK wheat production fell 12.5%, but that was a fall from 2015, when the yield of 8.97 tonnes a hectare was the highest in Defra's UK series. The likeliest reason the area held up is the same as in 2014: the autumn had been dry enough to sow.

Winter 2019/20: the worst harvest in the series

The trouble started in the autumn. England had 361.1 mm from September to November 2019, its 5th wettest autumn, and in the Midlands and in east and north-east England it was the 3rd wettest. The winter that followed was the UK's 5th wettest, with 474.7 mm. February 2020, with Storms Ciara and Dennis on consecutive weekends, was the wettest February on record for both the UK (213.7 mm) and England (160.9 mm).

AHDB re-ran its Early Bird planting survey that February. Its report opened: "Following the fifth wettest autumn on record, it comes as little surprise that winter drilled crop areas for 2020 have been hit." It found that the East Midlands had drilled 62% of its total wheat area by 14 February.

Defra's June 2020 survey confirmed it. England's wheat area fell 24.6% to 1,265,111 hectares, the smallest since the series began in 1983. Spring barley rose 78% to 791,710 hectares, the largest in the series, and oilseed rape fell 29.9%. UK wheat production was 9.66 million tonnes, down 40.5% and the lowest in Defra's UK series since 1999. The area bounced back the next year, up 31% for harvest 2021.

Winter 2023/24: wet autumn, wet winter

This time the autumn and the winter were both very wet. England had 496.6 mm from September to December 2023, the 4th wettest such spell on record, and then 367.6 mm in the winter, its 5th wettest. East Anglia had its 2nd wettest winter and its wettest February (112.8 mm). The Met Office named 12 storms that season, the most since naming began, among them Babet and Ciarán in the autumn.

AHDB's March 2024 re-run of its planting survey put the UK oilseed rape area at 280,000 hectares, which it said would be the smallest since 1984, and found arable fallow up almost 80% on 2023. It noted that this time the falls reflected crops lost over winter as well as fields that were never planted.

In Defra's June 2024 survey, England's wheat area was down 11.2% to 1,401,946 hectares, the second smallest since 1983. Oilseed rape was down 27.1% and spring barley up 28%. UK wheat production fell 20.3% to 11.15 million tonnes.

Winter 2025/26: the latest

Last winter was England's 8th wettest, with 344.3 mm, 144% of the 1991 to 2020 average. It was a southern and western winter again. The south-west and south Wales had 590.9 mm, its 4th wettest, and the south-east its 6th wettest; January 2026 was the second wettest January on record in the south-east, and in Northern Ireland. Scotland, by contrast, had 91% of its average.

The autumn before was wet but not extreme in England (324.7 mm, 20th of 190). Defra's June 2026 survey has England's wheat area at 1,497,123 hectares, 1.8% down on 2025 and the third smallest since 1983, so the area has not recovered to where it was before 2024. Defra's provisional estimate of England's 2026 wheat production is 10.76 million tonnes, up 0.8% on 2025.