LAST month was the wettest February on record for England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and the second wettest – behind February 1990 – for Scotland, according to the Met Office.
It has also been the fifth wettest of any calendar month in a series from 1862.
Since 1998, there have been six of the ten wettest years on record and while rainfall patterns in the UK have always shown a large range of natural variation, the UK Met Office says wetter winters is consistent with what the experts expect to happen in the future with continued climate change.