Last month was the wettest since records began in 1910, the Met Office has reported.
The early figures, which go up until April 29, will increase once data for April 30 is collated.
Up until Sunday, the UK had 121.8mm of rain – significantly more than the 69.6mm you would normally expect for the month and beating the previous record of 120.3mm set in 2000.
Many Met Office observation sites across the UK have broken their individual rainfall records, with six stations so far having seen more than three times their usual monthly average.
Liscombe in Somerset has seen the most rainfall, with 273.8mm of rain – more than three times the 86.4mm average.
At the other extreme, Prestwick in Ayrshire has seen just 39.2mm of rain and Skye has had just over half of its monthly rainfall – with 52mm of its 99.5mm average.
April has been in stark contrast to March, which was the fifth driest on record for the UK with 36.4mm of rain (comparing to the average of 95.9mm).
In another reversal of the norm, this April has also been cooler on average than March – the first time this has happened since 1998.
Figures which go up to 25th of this month show April’s mean temperature is 6.1C compared to March’s 7.7C.
No weather station across the UK has registered a temperature of 20°C or above this month, which is the first time this has happened since 2006 (and 1989 before that). Again, this is in contrast to March where the 20°C barrier was broken regularly.
The Met Office said that weather during these two contrasting and distinctly non-average months has been heavily influenced by the position of the jet-stream.
In March it brought prolonged settled and unusually warm weather, but a shift in the jet stream’s track has brought in unsettled weather for April.
We can all it then, that Like Australia, the BIG DRY is officially over 🙂
All this rain, it must be the drought!