2019–20 United Kingdom floods
severe flooding in England
Between November 2019 and February 2020, severe winter flooding occurred across the United Kingdom. The first wave of flooding occurred in November 2019, mainly affecting Yorkshire and the Humber, the East Midlands and the West Midlands. Further isolated flooding incidents were reported in December and January, before the second main wave of flooding, caused by Storms Ciara and Dennis, occurred in February 2020. The excessive rainfall resulted in the wettest February since records began, in 1766, in England and Wales with an average of 169.6 millimetres (6.68 in) falling across the regions, beating the record from 1833.
Background
Most of England received above average rainfall during October 2019, with some catchments receiving over double the average monthly total. Soils were wetter than average for the time of year across most of the country by the end of October. Monthly mean river flows were classed as exceptionally high at just over a third of indicator sites. Early on 8 November, heavy and prolonged rainfall fell on these saturated catchments across the southern Peak District causing flash floods and rivers to burst their banks. A week later on 14 November a further low pressure system brought more heavy rain to areas further south, raising water levels along on the rivers Severn and Avon.
Mid-November - February flooding
Yorkshire and the Humber
Sheffield
The Met Office reported that Sheffield had 84 mm (3.3 in) of rain in just over the 36 hours which preceded the flood.
The public source identifies “2019–20 United Kingdom floods” as severe flooding in England. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around United, Kingdom and floods.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q74182909. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2019, 2020, 1766 and 1833.
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This entry incorporates text from “2019–20 United Kingdom floods” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.