Severe weather swings leave families battling floods and farmers facing bad year
Extreme weather swings from drought to persistent rain have left families battling flooding and farmers facing another bad year in the fields.
The Met Office said this winter will be remembered for its “relentless rain”, with provisional figures showing many areas of the UK suffered very wet conditions over the season.
It marks a dramatic change from 2025, which saw record dry and warm conditions cause drought across swathes of the country, leading to hosepipe bans and impacts on agriculture and wildlife.
The final parts of England still struggling with drought only moved into recovery status in January as a result of wet conditions – though these led to repeated flood warnings for communities in some parts of the country.
Mike Kendon, a senior scientist at the Met Office, said that while this winter did not break any national records for rainfall, it will be remembered for its “relentless rain as much as its intensity”.
He said: “A near-continuous run of Atlantic systems over the past three months has brought persistent rain, damaging storms and few dry spells.”
The figures showed England experienced 35% more rain than the long-term average, Wales saw 14% more and Northern Ireland saw 25% more.
But Scotland’s levels were 16% below average, showing a mixed picture over all.
Devon and Cornwall had their second wettest winter on record and southern England had its seventh wettest but other regions have seen less rain than usual.
Farmers say the weather extremes in the last two years – from droughts to floods – have hit their incomes as well as their mental health, as yields suffer from the volatile rain patterns.
Rob Addicott, a mainly arable but mixed farmer based just south of Bath, said the swing in conditions have been “awful for us”.
“I think the worrying thing for me as a farmer is the frequency of these extreme weather events, whether it’s hot or wet,” he told the Press Association.
“This year’s been okay, but the previous two years we’ve had to re-establish failed crops because of poor weather conditions in the autumn/winter.
“It has a financial cost and also has the cost to your mental health every day, when you go out and see fields that are underwater rather than growing something.”
The volatility has meant the farm has been unable to plan properly, Mr Addicott added.
“Gone are the days when you plant a crop in the autumn and just take the winter off.”
The farmer said the last two years have been a “write-off” in terms of agricultural income, adding: “We’ve just been treading water.
“Fortunately, we’re a diversified business, so we’ve got other streams of income, but it doesn’t change the fact that it is a strain on finances, a strain on mental health.”
Mark Humphry, a dairy farmer based in the mid-catchment just north of Ilminster in Somerset, said his farm has lost about 30 acres of grass and will not make any money this year.
Two fields have had no yields since October 2023 because the drought in summer meant the seeds did not germinate until September, and they have now not properly established because of the recent flooding, he told PA.
“(It was a) terrible drought last summer for us,” he said, adding that they had nothing growing on the farm to feed the cattle across summer and through winter.
Their 650 cows are now being supported with food brought from outside (the farm), he said, adding they probably lost £30,000 in extra feed costs last summer.
“I don’t believe that last winter was a one-off. It might become a two-in-five-year occurrence,” he said.
“We’re going to have to adapt, aren’t we? And that’s going to be expensive.”
At a time when there is growing competing pressures on land in the UK – from agriculture, to housing, nature, and infrastructure – he said: “In terms of food security for us, we will probably need more acres to grow the same amount of food.”
Published: by Radio NewsHub