Local Forecasts, History & Records
Flooding and Rainfall in Durham UK
After the heavy rain of 14th August 2023, I set about looking back on days with similar totals in Durham since I started recording here. The total for 14th August was exactly 30.0 mm, which seems a suitable total to use as a threshold. Here’s what I found: 20th September 2025 32.5mm 26th September 2024 51.1mm 14th August …
Has the dry Spring happened before? After the phenomenally dry Spring this year, you might wonder whether this has happened before, and what was Durham’s driest year on record? Normal yearly rainfall in Durham (based on the 1991-2020 climatic mean) is around the 680mm mark. Spaced out evenly over the year, that is about 57 mm per month. But, it …
Three Rivers The geography of the North East of England is fairly uniform. Its westward flank is fortified by the rising spine of the Pennine Mountains, of which is embedded the origin point of its three main rivers, the Tyne, the Wear and the Tees, who flow down the hills eastwards into lower plains which then meet the North Sea. …
Mild at first, then cool and very wet (Storm Babet) The very first day of October 2023 delivered a 20 degC marker, which was the highest of the month. It remained very mild until 10th when it became much cooler. The first 10 days averaged 14.7 degC, with a mean max of 17.7 degC. It felt quite balmy. It was …
As some of you may have noticed, yesterday (October 5th 2021) was extremely wet! After a long spell with no real heavy rain, it seemingly all arrived on one day. We’d been warned to expect heavy rainfall, but it proved even wetter than that. Durham and North East England just seemed to be in the wrong place this time! Here’s …
January 2021 – A cold, wet month at Durham, With Storm Christoph a notable feature Temperature After the warmth of January 2020, this month proved to be the exact opposite. The month proved to be both wet and wintry, with an exceptional snowfall in the North East area on or around the 6th-8th of the month. Some photographs from snowy …
Alright my weather mateys. Who’s sick of wet weather? If you didn’t put your hand up there you must be some kind of weirdo. It seems like it’s been raining for years non-stop now. The dry soils of last spring are now a distant memory. We often hear it said that it’s ‘raining cats and dogs’ and even ‘stair rods’, …
Rainfall October 2020 opened very wet. A total of 32.7mm of rain was recorded at Gilesgate, Durham on 3rd resulted in a rapid rise in the River Wear, overtopping the banks in places, and reaching 2.76m at 8:15am on the 4th. The river level fell back rapidly and had dropped a metre by mid afternoon. It was the wettest day …
Durham Weather : August 2020 The weather in Durham in August 2020 was disappointing overall after starting out really well. It was typical of the summer really. There were no long settled spells as such at Durham, although some very warm weather was experienced in the south of the country, culminating with 36.4C recorded at Heathrow and Kew Gardens. The …
23rd August 2020. Very heavy rain in Durham This is the scene from the Bandstand by the River Wear in Durham on Sunday 23rd August 2020. The heavy deluge dropped 9 mm of rain in 10 minutes on Durham and its surroundings. That’s a rate of 54 mm per hour, which is a proper downpour by any standards. In the …
There was a very wild start to February, although it was relatively mild. Storm Ciara over the weekend of 8th/9th brought damaging gusts and flooding. The worst of it passed to the South of us, but there was major flooding in Yorkshire and winds gusted to 93mph in Wales. The River Wear in Durham rose dramatically during the morning of Sunday …
Storm Ciara batters the UK After spending a fair bit of time concentrating on the wind speeds, we sort of forgot about the rain that Storm Ciara was going to deliver. Thankfully we missed some of the squall lines that hit further south. My total for rainfall was only 22.9mm, but obviously far more fell on the catchment areas on …