The rainfall on the wettest day of Babet was 22.76mm averaged across England & Wales. There have been 44 wetter days since 1931 alone. In Scotland it was even less remarkable, ranking only 253rd.

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

h/t Euan Mearns

The Met Office have been desperate to hype Storm Babet into something exceptional:

We now have the official data available from the UK Regional Precipitation Series, and it shows it to be nothing of the sort.

The rainfall on the wettest day of Babet was 22.76mm averaged across England & Wales. There have been 44 wetter days since 1931 alone. In Scotland it was even less remarkable, ranking only 253rd.

Even in the Central region of England, it was only the 15th wettest day.

The Met Office have therefore resorted to what is known as data mining to get the result they wanted. The daily rainfall data did not provide the required results, or nor did the 2-day data, nor for that matter the 4-day data. So they presented the 3-day data, in order to claim that it was the 3rd wettest in England & Wales, and wettest in the English Midlands.

On the 2-day data, Babet was only the 11th wettest, whilst the 4-day period was the 8th wettest in England & Wales:

Of course, some areas inevitably are worse affected than others, that’s weather. But there is no evidence that Babet  brought unprecedented amounts of rain overall.

The England & Wales Rainfall series only has daily data back to 1931, and we know there were many severe floods prior to then. But we do have daily data from Durham dating back to 1900 – the North East was said to be one of the worst affected areas during Babet.

According to the Met Office, rainfall was between around 50 to 80mm in the Durham area in the four days of the storm, the higher numbers presumably in the hillier inland regions:

Compare that to the highest 5-day amounts, which often exceed that 60mm, and it is plain that Babet was nothing exceptional, in Durham at least.

The wettest 5-day period occurred in September 1976, with 140.7mm; as the Met Office explained at the time, the month as a whole was exceptionally wet across the country, with some areas receiving up to 400% of its usual rain.

On the 11th, Durham recorded 87.8mm, on top of the 32.3mm the day before:

Durham Rainfall per KNMI

Sheffield is another town highlighted by the Met Office during Babet, with about 100mm falling over the four days. But again we find that there have been much wetter spells in the past:

As the Met Office should have learnt by now, storms like Babet not that uncommon at all.