How has climate change reshaped drought in the West Midlands?

It’s a little on the nose for nature to give us another drought 50 years after the one we had in 1976 but here we are.

It illustrates the impact of climate change, population growth and the way we use water today.

Half a century of climate change has given us the “flash drought”, which although not a proper metereological term, nicely points out, as a description of the 2026 dry spell, how much the climate has changed.

In 1976 we had a dry winter, spring and then summer leading up to the drought itself. This year we have full reservoirs from a winter of endless rain but then sometime in the spring, that just stopped.

As if a switch is being flipped, there’s no more rain and we enter a drought with a speed we’ve not really seen before, hence the term “flash”.

I usually shorthand the impact of climate change in the West Midlands as “wetter winters and hotter, drier summers” and 2026 is the perfect illustration of this.