UK has experienced 'weirdest weather on record' this year

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We started spring with a drought and since then we've had seemingly endless rain, floods and gales. So it's little wonder that scientists say that, this year, the UK has experienced its "weirdest" weather on record.

BBC News reports that the driest spring for over a century then dramatically gave way to the wettest recorded April to June.

And experts from the Environment Agency, Met Office and Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH) have now warned that the UK should be prepared for weather to swing between these two extremes in the future.

Encouragingly, Paul Mustow, who is head of flood management at the Environment Agency, told BBC News that evidence suggests that the UK is now coping better with flooding.

He explained that although 4,500 properties had been flooded this year, we have been "lucky" considering that over 55,000 properties were flooded in 2007. He added that 53,000 properties would have been flooded this year without flood defences.

The scientists also insisted that we shouldn't read too much into the unusual weather, as there's no evidence that man-made climate change is to blame.

Sarah Jackson from the Met Office said that this year's weather conditions were partly caused by a move to a negative phase of the North Atlantic Oscillation, which is likely to lead to more frequent cold, dry winters - like in the 1960s - and wetter summers - for the next 10-20 years.

Click on the image below for some weird weather around the world...

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