NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

When the BBC makes claims about record rainfall, I suggest you check your wallet!

Official statistics for January have been released by the Met Office and confirm what many will already suspect – it has been very wet for many areas.

Northern Ireland, south-west and southern England, and the east of Scotland all had one of their wettest Januarys on record.

With 70% more rain than average Northern Ireland experienced the wettest January for 149 years. Culdrose in Cornwall recorded two and a quarter- times its average, while Aboyne in Aberdeenshire had nearly four times its January average of 68.9mm.

So, let’s check the claims.

It was not a record January in N Ireland – it was wetter in 1877:

In the small print, you will see “the wettest January for 149 years” – most people will assume that was the start of the record. Either way, the BBC’s headline is false – no records were broken in N Ireland.

Nor was it a record in East Scotland, it was only the ninth wettest:

And across southern England, it was only the sixth wettest.

The BBC also fails to put any of these numbers in proper context. Instead, they only want to spread “record rainfall” propaganda.

Rainfall in N Ireland totalled 195.6mm last month. Across all months, there have been a total of 24 months with more than 190mm there. The wettest month came in October 1870, when 247.9mm fell.

In simple terms, it was the wettest month in N Ireland for six years – but that does not make scary headlines!

It was, of course, very wet in certain localities, as often happens when the jet stream gets stuck. It was the South West which came off worst last month, as people who live there have rightly commented.

The Somerset Levels have flooded, but it was not as wet in Yeovilton last month as it was in January 2014 – 147.2 v 166.4 mm.

Since the start of records there in 1964, there have been fifteen months with more than 140 mm of rain, with the wettest being 192.4mm in November 2002:

The Met Office are, frankly, piss poor at providing meteorological data to the public. They offer no historical daily data at all and only monthly data at a handful of sites, such as Yeovilton.

I gather there was 271 mm in Torbay. But even that pales into insignificance in comparison with some of the totals registered in November 1929. October 1960 was also extremely wet in Devon, with 311 mm falling in Exeter.