It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Last autumn, after a dry summer, the Guardian scare stories warned us that climate change meant the UK was facing the prospect of terrible water shortages. “England facing drastic measures due to extreme drought next year” warned the Guardian headline on 8th November 2025. It was so bad that the secondary headline told us “Government and water companies are devising emergency plans for worst water shortage in decades”.

Executives at one major water company told the Guardian they were extremely concerned about the prospect of a winter with lower than average rainfall, which the Met Office’s long-term forecast says is likely...

Ah, the good old Met Office. Wrong, again. As was the Guardian, wrongly relying on the Met Office’s inaccurate forecast:

So Met Office warnings of increased risk of dry spells through an important time of year for recharge of our water resources will ring alarm bells.

It wasn’t just the Met Office and the Guardian ringing alarm bells:

Prof Hannah Cloke, a professor of hydrology at the University of Reading, said: “We now need exceptional rainfall all winter just to recover….With climate change drying Britain out for longer periods in the future, we need to adapt to the climate we have now. Building new reservoirs will help, but we also need much more management of demand, and a more ambitious plan for water resilience.”

I don’t argue with the need for a more ambitious plan for water resilience. With the UK’s population having increased by millions without a large reservoir having been built for decades, and with expansive plans for water-hungry AI datacentres, we certainly need to take steps to ensure we conserve the rainwater that falls. And it is true that some versions of climate alarmism do warn of dry summers and wet winters. So I am not entirely justified in complaining about drought alarmists. However, I think it’s fair to criticise those who warned of an extended drought on the assumption that the Met Office correctly predicted a dry winter to be sandwiched between last year’s dry summer and an assumption of a dry summer this year.

Even had the warning been correct it wouldn’t have justified claims that this was because of climate change. Those of us old enough to remember it know well that the 1976 drought wasn’t caused solely by an exceptionally prolonged and hot dry summer (though the summer of 1976 was all of those things). Rather, it was the result of a two-year drought that included the winter of 1975/6:

The famous DROUGHT of 1975/76 was memorable for its severity over most of the British Isles, and also for its exceptional persistence. It produced the highest values for a drought index for south-east England in three hundred years. Not since 1749/50 had a period from one summer to the following spring been so dry in southern Britain. At Oxford, every month from May 1975 to August 1976 had below average rainfall with the sole exception of September 1975. It was the DRIEST 16-month period on record for England and Wales. The severity of the drought was highlighted by the acute hydrological impact of an exceptionally dry winter being sandwiched between two hot, dry summers.

As for the winter of 2025/26, what a difference three months makes. If one believed the hype and headline of the Guardian story of 8th November 2025, one wouldn’t have expected to read an article with today’s Guardian headline (“Why is the UK so rainy this year and how is the climate crisis making matters worse?”) and certainly not its secondary headline (“It has rained in parts of the country every day of the year so far and downpours are expected to continue this week”). Needless to say, the Guardian managed to blame the rain on the “climate crisis” (sic), just as three months ago it blamed the prospect of an extreme drought exacerbated by a forecast dry winter (that didn’t materialise) on the same imaginary crisis.

It’s worth re-visiting the Met Office three month forecast for the winter of 2025/26 :

The chances of a wet 3-month period are less than normal, with the chance of a dry period higher than normal. This is due to an increased likelihood of high pressure patterns influencing the UK through the period.

In a Q&A under the Met Office three-month forecast, one answer says “…this Outlook does not suggest consistent improvement from the current drought conditions across the UK.” Today the Guardian reports:

Neumann said: “One positive to come from the recent rainfall is the move to recovery status for UK water resources.” She added that England is now free from drought for the first time since May, with reservoirs and aquifers slowly restocking and recharging to healthy levels.

In November 2025 the Guardian was happy to spread drought concerns on the basis of the Met Office forecast, and to blame this state of affairs on climate change. It’s most unfortunate for the cause that the high pressure was supposed to be stuck over the UK, whereas instead we’ve had a blocking high over Scandinavia. Consequently, the Guardian now says “[s]cientists think fossil fuel pollution is making the jet stream more erratic…”. Heads the climate alarmists win, tails the climate sceptics lose.

But it’s not a good look for the Met Office (not that I imagine the BBC or the Guardian will be drawing our attention to its failure any time soon, so long as it continues to propagandise about the “climate crisis”). I wonder if the Met Office has any employees old enough to remember the drought of 1975/6?

26 Comments

  1. On any given day of the year, some place on earth is likely to have record heat or precipitation for the date and and another record cold or rainfall. One place is likely to be in extended drought and another has too much rain. Weather records are fascinating. Learning about the past is an antidote for making ignorant statements about the present and the attribution of weather events.

    Liked by 1 person

  2. Even better there are hottest/coldest, driest/wettest, windiest/calmest records to be set and 12 months and four seasons to consider. So, if these stats were completely random (they aren’t, of course), we might expect a ‘once per century’ event to occur every 18 months or so, for every location on earth.

    Liked by 1 person

  3. Doug Allen, Quentin Vole,

    Yes, it’s extraordinarily easy to claim a new weather record and then blame it on climate change. The ability to claim records is aided by the fact that many parts of the globe have very limited records until recently, and the UK has many fairly new weather stations in locations likely to record more extreme weather than older weather sites. Paul Homewood’s piece makes the latter point well:

    Met Office’s N Ireland Rainfall Dataset Is Worthless

    Then there’s the tendency of chunks of the MSM (especially the BBC and the Guardian) to seize on special days – “warmest New Year’s Eve ever” (even though it’s far from being the warmest December day ever recorded); “hottest August Bank Holiday Monday ever” (even though it’s far from being the hottest August day ever recorded). And so on.

    Like

  4. The BBC is on the case:

    “‘Blocked’ weather pattern to blame for UK’s endless downpours”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/articles/cn9el029173o

    In fairness, both to the BBC and to the Met Office, they make a point that is absolutely spot on:

    …Low-pressure weather systems have been stalling across the UK and Western Europe in general, leading to days of rain and cloudy skies.

    It has been caused by a large area of high pressure being stuck across Scandinavia and acting like a road-block preventing weather systems from moving eastward as we’d normally see.

    This is a “blocked” weather pattern and, while fairly common, it has been notable because of its consequences on the UK so far this year.

    Blocked weather patterns can take on slightly different forms depending on where exactly large areas of high pressure can become stuck.

    For example, if the blocked area of high pressure happens to be situated over the UK, it stops rain-bearing weather systems from arriving and gives us a prolonged dry spell….[my emphasis].

    Had that happened, the Met Office’s long-range forecast would have been correct, instead of hopelessly wrong. However, on such small (and entirely natural) issues do huge weather differences turn. That’s why it’s absurd to blame prolonged dry or wet periods on climate change. It’s also why it’s arguably very silly for the Met Office to issue long-range forecasts which are wrong so often.

    Liked by 2 people

  5. It’s Climate Change The Facts To Fit The Narrative, that’s what it is.

    Nutters, nutters, everywhere, and not a pause to think.

    On the one hand, we’ve got the ‘climate crisis’ fruit loops telling us that cold/wet/dry/hot weather is caused by ‘climate change’ and on the other we’ve got the geoengineering dweebs saying that the endless grey skies and rain are the result of the government ‘dimming the sun’, prominent among whom is former Conservative MP Andrew Bridgen!

    In reality, it’s what the BBC said (which is a miracle in itself, i.e. the BBC caught in the act of reporting facts, and just facts, minus any spin). The Jet Stream is still far south of the UK, pummelling the Atlantic coast of Portugal, but instead of enjoying dry, settled weather here in the UK as a result of this, as luck would have it, all we’re getting is slow moving, sluggish depressions bringing cloud and rain because the drying centres of high pressure are over Scandinavia and Greenland. But it looks like it might all change mid month and we’ll get more traditional high winds and yet more rain coming from the Atlantic as the jet stream moves north once more. Deep joy. A winter I think which perfectly matches the national mood at the moment.

    Liked by 2 people

  7. You have to laugh – Why does Somerset keep flooding? some quotes –

    “It has been another wet January in Somerset, the wettest since the great floods of 2014. Declaring a “major incident”, council officials reported the water came up even faster this year than it did 12 years ago. One seasoned local flood campaigner said the water rose “ridiculously fast”, with some fields and roads going underwater in 36 hours.”

    “Is Somerset flooding the new normal? “What we see with climate change is it pushes the extremes,” says Alex Deakin, a meterologist at the Met Office. Warmer air carries more moisture, he explained. Since 1850 the world has warmed about 1.3C, and that warmer air can take about 10% more water. “It’s fairly straightforward that when it rains, it rains that much harder,” Deakin explained. “But also climate change is pushing those extremes, so when you get heavy rain it’s just that much heavier as well,” he added.”

    You sometimes wonder if they purposely ignore things like – The Somerset Levels Flood Case Study – Internet Geography

    “The Somerset Levels are a coastal plain and wetland area in Somerset, England. Thousands of years ago, the area was covered by the sea, but today it’s a landscape of rivers and wetlands – artificially drained, irrigated and modified to allow productive farming.”

    Liked by 1 person

  9. Towards the end of PM yesterday, they had a long feature on the wet weather and climate change, and even wheeled on a professor from the Met Office (missed her name) to blandly cite the usual “1 degree equals 7% more moisture in the atmosphere” line (which is why, as everyone knows, the worst floods always occur in July).

    Liked by 1 person

  10. Can we do a bit of science here?

    We are told endlessly that warmer air holds more moisture. To this bear of little brain, the key question is how much more. My dimly-remembered science education suggests that, where temperature is a factor in physical or chemical equations, it is the absolute temperature that applies – degrees Kelvin.

    Using crude numbers, we are a little below 300 degrees K and the world has warmed by around 1.5 degrees. That’s an increase of about 0.5%. That seems negligible and unlikely to have much effect.

    Can someone more knowledgeable confirm whether I have this right? (It’s an argument I’ve used quite often in pub debates so I hope I don’t have to row back on it!).

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  11. Mark,

    From that first BBC article:

    Professor Ed Hawkins is looking at the camera and wearing the climate change stripe jacket which is dark blue, light blue, orange and red.
    Professor Ed Hawkins is wearing the climate change jacket which shows 2026 is “red hot”

    As part of the IPCC visit, a public lecture was held at the university. Reading was the birthplace of the climate stripes, a visual representation of what’s been happening to the world.

    Climate scientist at the university, Professor Ed Hawkins explained that his jacket represented the changing global temperatures from 1850 to 2025.

    He said: “The left of the jacket is cold blues from the 1850s and changes to hot reds for 2025.”

    Look, just make Ed the new Doctor will you BBC, his enormous talent is obviously going to waste at Reading.

    My head hurts.

    Liked by 1 person

  12. By the way, if you want to check Met Office historical rainfall, sunshine and temperature data in a convenient graphical form, as I do often in order to contextualise the often absurd and unsubstantiated claims of the climate alarmist media, you can’t anymore. This page has not been working for some time now. Which is rather convenient when we’re being told ‘climate change is here and it is a lived experience’. I don’t think it’s just me. Perhaps others could confirm if they can get the page to work.

    https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/maps-and-data/uk-temperature-rainfall-and-sunshine-time-series

    Like

  13. Jaime, that page works for me. Interestingly, UK January rainfall shows a slight downward trend over the last few years, and as for talk of climate whiplash (or whatever it is) probably the most dramatic examples of a very wet January followed by a very dry January seem to be in the 1850s and the late 1920s.

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  16. Thanks Jon, John and Mark. I’m now intrigued. Have tried both my laptops, disabled VPN, cleared cache and cookies etc. and it’s still not working.

    Like

  18. How very strange. I used Tor Browser which prevents websites from collecting user info and the Met Office website has denied access! Other sites, like the BBC etc. I tried, no problem.

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  19. It’s a bit of a red flag that the Met Office is preventing user access via Tor Browser which prevents them from identifying users via browser fingerprinting. Usually, it’s just banks and airlines etc. which do this for security purposes. But I am just a tinfoil hat conspiracy theorist, so there may be a perfectly logical explanation for this. I’ll keep trying to gain access.

    Liked by 1 person

  20. This is interesting. Remember that we’re always being told that a silent majority support net zero etc?

    “Thursday briefing: Britain ​is ​flooding, ​so ​why ​is ​support for ​net ​zero ​drying ​up?

    In today’s newsletter: ​Misinformation, rising bills and shifting party lines ​have reshape​d attitudes toward green policies​ at a time when the UK has experienced unprecedented weather events”

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/12/thursday-briefing-britain-is-flooding-so-why-is-support-for-net-zero-drying-up

    Misinformation, eh? Things like this?
    …The culprit behind Britain’s endless drizzle is no mystery. At current levels of global heating, the Met Office estimates that very wet winters have shifted from once-in-80-year events to once in every 20 years.…extreme rainfall becoming the new normal…

    But this is the interesting bit:

    …the UK’s sense of urgency on net zero targets and its support for climate policies is falling sharply, according to a major new study.…

    …The study found that just 29% of the public now say the UK should reach net zero before the government’s 2050 target. That’s down from 54% in 2021.

    At the same time, the proportion who say the UK shouldn’t have a net zero target at all, has jumped from 9% to 26%.

    The research was carried out by the Policy Institute at King’s College London, Ipsos, and the Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations, and is based on a large, nationally representative survey.

    Support has also fallen across a range of specific policies. Backing for low-traffic neighbourhoods, taxes on frequent flyers, subsidies for electric vehicles and taxes on environmentally damaging foods have all declined. In several cases, opposition now outweighs support, a sharp reversal from just a few years ago. The drop has been steepest among people aged over 55....

    The study can be found here:

    https://www.kcl.ac.uk/policy-institute/assets/declining-urgency-enduring-support-public-attitudes-to-net-zero-and-climate-policy.pdf

    It includes things like this:

    The belief that the UK needs to achieve net zero sooner than 2050 is no longer the majority view among young and middle-aged people, but older people are now most sceptical.

    COnsequently, I expect a panicky doubling-down on the narrative.

    Liked by 1 person

  21. Funny how the more information they given the more people realize It’s madness.

    Like

  22. PS – love this loaded result to a question –

    “Most people don’t consider themselves to be either a climate change activist or climate change sceptic, but younger people are more likely to identify as the former and older people as the latter”.

    16-34 years & 35-54 years win as “Climate change activist”. 55+ years are the main “Climate change sceptic”

    Can’t be bothered to read any further. Seems the people that may have been respected in the past for having life experiences are now seen as “Climate change sceptic” or the dirty “D” word.

    Like

  23. “Flooding caused by poor maintenance, says alliance”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c043l3dd4nwo

    Flooding in up to 30 locations across a county could be the result of decades of missed maintenance, officers have said.

    For the past two decades motorists using the bridge over Costessey Road, Taverham, Norfolk, have been left stranded or subjected to diversions each time heavy rainfall and storms have left parts of the village flooded.

    Norfolk Strategic Flooding Alliance said a ditch and culvert on the River Wensum had been poorly maintained which had caused it to become blocked, leaving floodwater with nowhere to go but the road.

    The group said it has outlined plans to tackle the flooding in Taverham as an example of work that could be replicated across the county….

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  25. UK and Northern Europe has always had very variable weather, so it is pretty sure when you get 2 months of dry there will soon be two months of wet
    That is why I was contested our usual friend Kathryn Porter for her Telegraph article
    Norway’s electricity crisis is about to hit Britain
    quote The situation in Norway is getting critical. We normally import 1.4 GW from the south of Norway, but with reservoirs approaching 20 year lows, Norway may begin to restrict exports
    If not and the water runs out, we can expect to export 1.4 GW of baseload to Norway, creating a 2.8 GW reduction in generating capacity available for the GB market

    How has her prediction panned out ?
    second half 2025 and 2026 hydro water levels have exactly tracked the last 2 year median
    https://www.statnett.no/en/for-stakeholders-in-the-power-industry/data-from-the-power-system/#hydrological-data
    She did mention that she is really meaning the southwest corner locations (NO2)
    I can check that by clicking NO2 on the data map
    and actually that does show a trend since the middle of 2025 of being down about 20% from the median,
    today 45 when the median is 60
    but still significantly higher than 29 (the minimum level over last 20 years)
    I suspect there is an explanation. Like that much rainfall comes as snow so doesn’t impact levels so much until the spring melt comes

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  26. Mark – your comment “Flooding caused by poor maintenance, says alliance” reminded about a blog by someone involved in the Environment Agency.

    If I remember correctly he/she said the Agency were deliberately not dredging/clearing drainage channels in an effort to make the area a wetland for wildlife.

    Tried to find a website with no luck.

    Like

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