It's useful to know the last time the weather was this dry, for clues about what we can expect. We ask: when has the weather been drier?
We have added the Met Office collated rainfall for all the UK and those specifically for East Anglia to a spreadsheet below for you to download.
There's lots of data on that spreadsheet so we've graphed some of the key datasets. Let's start with the big picture - the rainfall for the whole UK from 1910 to 2010:
This graph shows that 1933 was the driest year for the UK in the past 100 years.
Here's a graph of the UK rainfall for the month of May in the years 1910 to 2011:
This shows that the May of 1991 was the driest.
Here's a graph of rainfall in May in East Anglia for the past 100 years:
This shows that 1989 was the driest May in East Anglia for the past 100 years.
But often combining the months of spring gives a better prediction of the weather conditions. Looking at spring rainfall in East Anglia, that is rainfall for the months of from March to May, we see that this is the driest spring on record for the past 100 years in East Anglia:
So, looking at the effects of dry weather in 1989 should give some idea of what is to come for the farmers of East Anglia in May but there is no comparison point for those farmers if we look at the whole of spring this year.
Do you agree that these are the years to compare with our current situation? Here's all the data for you to explore.