If it feels like the rain hasn’t stopped this year, you might be on to somethingpublished at 11:37 GMT
11:37 GMT
Chris Fawkes
BBC Weather presenter
Image source, MET OFFICE/BBCImage caption,
A map of January 2026 rainfall totals. In the background, extensive flooding around Fordgate and Moorland in Somerset
Parts of the UK have been hit with a real deluge so far this year with Cornwall and County Down recording their wettest January on record.
It’s been particularly wet in southern England, Northern Ireland and East Scotland. If it feels like the rain just hasn’t stopped this year, you might be on to something, Cardinham in Cornwall has recorded some rain every single day of the year so far!
Katesbridge (County Down) and Aboyne (Aberdeenshire) recorded nearly 4 times their January average rainfall, and history is repeating itself this month.
We’re not even at the half way point of the month and Aboyne has already had well over double the February average rainfall.
Why so wet?
Around the 17th January a blocking area of high pressure developed in Scandinavia, it’s still there to this day.
This has prevented areas of low pressure from moving beyond the UK so they’ve become slow-moving bringing very wet weather, with southwest winds to the south of the UK and southeasterly winds to the north of the UK.
This wind pattern is responsible for the distribution of rain. It’s worth pointing out that it hasn’t been wet everywhere. Northwest England and west Scotland had a much drier January than normal, and parts of the Highlands have only recorded 1mm of rain so far this month.
This Scandinavian blocking area of high pressure is finally going to budge this week, as it does our weather patterns will become more typical next week.
There will still be rain around as we’d expect in winter, but some of the wettest weather will return to west Scotland.
The rain won’t be as extreme in east Scotland. In the southwest of England, it won’t rain every single day, there will be drier and sunnier days between weather our systems.