‘Seasons have become confused’: the people struggling in UK’s relentless rain | UK weather

With 76 flood warnings still in force across the UK and further downpours forecast this week and next, parts of the country have endured rain almost without pause since the start of the year.

The prolonged wet weather is disrupting livelihoods as well as daily life, particularly in rural areas, where flooded roads, waterlogged ground and repeated storms are making it harder to keep businesses afloat, protect crops and maintain steady work.

Here, people share how the relentless rain and bad weather is affecting them and their businesses.

‘You’re sitting in your truck doing nothing while the rain pours’

In north Devon, Mark Harrington, a master thatcher, has been inundated with calls from customers with leaking roofs in recent months. “This is silly season for us thatchers,” he says.

Harrington, 61, has been fixing thatched roofs for 30 years. “I do understand that you’re going to get some rain in winter, but it has definitely got worse. Even if you do manage to work for a day, it’s punctuated by periods of an hour and a half of rain where you’re sitting in your truck doing nothing. Before, I used to think, a day off, that’s great. But now you think, oh, jeez, not another day off!”

The delays have financial consequences for Harrington. “I am haemorrhaging money at the moment just trying to cope with the delays,” he says. “Jobs are taking longer, customers are unwilling to pay for extra scaffolding to over-roof their property, and the lads who work with me – who I have spent time and money on over the years training – are grumbling that they need to find work indoors. I’m earning a minimal wage myself.”

Harrington used to be able to pay his employees half a day’s wages when their work was rained off, but not any more. “I’d run out of money.”

The weather’s impact on his materials, such as wheat, adds further pressure. “If wheat seeds lay on wet ground for an extended period of time, they don’t germinate and this will affect availability. We had a disastrous crop two years ago and are still suffering from the after-effects of the shortage.” Shortages mean the crop becomes more expensive, leading to higher costs for customers.

“If a skilled tradesman such as myself is unable to maintain a team or even work as much as is required, then I fear for the future,” he says.

‘I’m concerned that what we’ve seen so far is only the beginning of a long drawn out disaster’

On a hill near Helston in Cornwall, John, 83, says it is the relentlessness of the rain that is doing the damage. This year alone he and his wife, Vicki, 73, have lost 15 trees – many of them pines they planted nearly 40 years ago to provide shelter for their plant nursery as well as for “sheer beauty”.

“What I see is a combination of results from the increased numbers of storms and continuous rainfall,” he says. “The ground gets very soggy, and the trees hold less well in it,” he says. “It’s such a shame to see a tree you planted lying on its side.”

Living on a hill offers some protection from flooding, but the surrounding lanes have been submerged, at times with water three-quarters of the way up car wheels. Heavy rain has also worsened potholes, turning what was once a straightforward seven-mile drive into Helston into an obstacle course. “The time I take to do that same drive is pretty well doubled, because I’m dodging potholes and having to keep my speed right down,” he says.

The worsening weather has caused other problems. Vicki, who runs the plant nursery, says the increasingly unstable weather has made small-scale growing far more difficult.

Even on a south-facing slope high on a hill, the ground is “totally soggy and waterlogged”, with standing water lingering after heavy rain. “Flood water is really irritating – slopping around in mud everywhere and trying to keep drains clear,” she says. But it is the combination of saturated ground and increasingly violent winds that has proved most damaging.

Vicki, who specialises in old-fashioned fragrant and historic roses, along with culinary and aromatic herbs, has decided to scale back operations. The latest bad weather brought three storms in quick succession. “Storm Goretti,” she says, “blew my last remaining polytunnel cover off.” Looking across the site, she adds: “It’s very hard to come back from that. It takes a lot of work to build up stock.”

“Thirty or 40 years ago, it was fine. There’s no way I would contemplate polytunnels on top of a hill now. The climate has changed so much.”

John predicts the worst is yet to come. “As global heating progresses there is a likelihood that we will have structural damage to buildings as well as trees. I’m concerned that what we’ve seen so far is only the beginning of a long drawn out disaster,” he says. “Some mornings we wake up and because it’s so misty and dank, it feels like the start of a third-rate historian novel.”

The relentless rain hasn’t just affected those working in rural areas.

‘I worked in gardens where half the plants were dying last summer, and now they’re all soaked’

“It’s been hard to work with this much rain,” says Connor Law, a gardener in London. “I don’t mind working through a shower or two but when it’s so consistently wet, you can end up accidentally disturbing plants. So jobs get pushed further and further back. I’m self-employed, so it’s going to start making money a bit tight if it carries on for too long.”

Law, 33, has worked outdoors for the past 10 years and has noticed changes in the weather becoming increasingly extreme. “I worked in gardens where half the plants were dying last summer, and now they’re all soaked. Especially here in London, seasons have become confused. I saw spring bulbs flowering in December,” he says.

“Working as a gardener, you see it first-hand every day. [Parts of the UK] only recently came out of an official drought due to how dry last year was. It wasn’t really that noticeable unless you’re working in the gardens. [But] droughts followed by flooding are becoming increasingly common.”

Law says people will have to change their approach to their gardens. “We can’t do what we’ve traditionally done for the last couple of hundred years. They’re going to have to look a bit different. I’ve always told people to grow wetland plants; if you’ve got an area garden that keeps flooding, try and embrace it and encourage frogs and insects to move in.

Conditions in London may be milder than other parts of the country at the moment, but the climate is still a concern, Law says. “The rain isn’t causing danger to people’s lives like in other parts of the country – I have family in Wales and the south-west where it’s more hairy.

“But in terms of the health of the natural environment, people’s gardens are really important for biodiversity, insects and carbon capture. And if things in your garden are constantly dying because the conditions have changed, we’re going to lose that resource.”