After the hottest summer on record for the UK along with one of driest springs, droughts with hosepipe bans were declared in many regions.
The National Drought Group met at the end of October where the Environment Agency suggested that England needs at least 100% of average rainfall up to the end of March to largely recover from drought.
The good news is that recent months have been pretty wet with data from the Met Office Hadley Centre showing that up to the 25 November most of the UK has had near to above average rainfall for autumn.
On Thursday Thames Water lifted their hosepipe ban covering 1.1m customers, mainly in Berkshire, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Wiltshire with immediate effect citing above-average rainfall and customer efforts made to conserve water.
On the same day Yorkshire Water announced that their current hosepipe ban is expected to end “within the next few weeks”, earlier than initially thought due to plentiful rain.
In September the whole of the north-east England area, which covers Yorkshire, had 152% of its normal rainfall with 90% falling in October. Up to the 25 November there has already been 145% of normal rain.
A spokesperson from Yorkshire Water said reservoir levels were recovering well, now standing at 84.6% full, up from 80.5% last week.
Meanwhile, Hull aquifer levels were at 49.4% – up from 46.6%.
Helen Wakeham, chair of the National Drought Group said “recent rain is very welcome, but it needs to be sustained over the next six months…to fill up our rivers, reservoirs and groundwater levels”.