By Emily Beament

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Sustained wet weather this autumn and winter is needed to ensure recovery from this year’s “exceptional” drought – and that looks unlikely, experts have warned.

The latest Met Office outlook suggests the chances of dry conditions are higher than of wet weather, and the UK is most likely to see near-average rainfall, making it “pretty unlikely” there will be enough rainfall by the end of the year to make up for the very dry spring and summer.

Scientists also warned that without action to curb climate change, there will be more “swings” from the persistent wet weather seen in 2023 and 2024 to prolonged dry conditions, along with heatwaves and wildfires, that hit this year.

They also called for more action to keep water in the system such as fixing leaks, which could have delayed the need for hosepipe bans this summer.

The UK has experienced its hottest spring and summer, and one of the driest, on record, tipping many areas into drought, leading to hosepipe bans for millions of households, putting pressure on farmers and the environment, and causing a record area of land to be burned in wildfires.

Jamie Hannaford, principal hydrologist at the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, said the rainfall deficits and temperatures in spring and summer made 2025 an “exceptional” year.

So too did very low river flows – with some rivers lower than they had been in recent droughts such as 2022 and 2018 and some, such as the Yorkshire Derwent, going below 1976 levels.

It was a “really serious drought episode” with impacts in terms of water quality, navigation and widespread wildfires, Mr Hannaford said.

Despite welcome rain, which had eased pressures in some sectors, he warned: “The drought is not over.”

Mr Hannaford added: “We really need sustained wet weather over the autumn and winter.

“The autumn and winter is the critical period for replenishing our aquifers and also reservoirs.

“So it’s going to be necessary, with these huge deficits that have built up over a really long period through 2025, we’re going to need a lot more sustained rainfall to get a recovery to avoid starting 2026 from a lower baseline.”

Dr Will Lang, chief meteorologist at the Met Office, said the relatively wet September had not really made “significant inroads” into the rainfall deficit the UK had experienced in 2025.

He said the latest seasonal outlook from the Met Office for the last three months of the year suggested that while the chance of a dry three-month period through to December for the UK is around normal, the chance of a wet period is less than normal.

Dr Lang said the most likely outcome for October, November and December was near-average rainfall, with potentially large regional differences.

He said: “Are we likely to get the rainfall we need to address that deficit over the coming months?

“The answer is, it’s not impossible, but it’s looking pretty unlikely at this stage.”

The experts also warned that 2025 and other recent drought years such as 2022 – when temperatures topped 40C in parts of the UK for the first time in a searing heatwave – and 2018, also showed the impact of hotter temperatures worsening droughts.

The extremely hot and dry conditions seen this spring and summer came after record wet weather and flooding in 2023 and 2024.

Dr Chloe Brimicombe, climate scientist at the Royal Meteorological Society, said: “Unless we reduce these emissions from greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, these swings are becoming more common.

“So we’re more likely to see persistent wet weather followed by persistent dry weather, and then have the heatwaves and the wildfires mixed into that.”

She warned of “cascading hazards” where drought worsens heatwaves as heat rises off baking ground and the high temperatures make the dry conditions more extreme, while both together worsen the risk of wildfires.

Dr Brimicombe called for efforts to tackle climate change, and added that short-term policy measures such as fixing leaking pipes and other infrastructure could keep more water within the system, which could have meant hosepipe bans were brought in slightly later in the summer.