Extreme weather: Wettest day on record this October

Saturday October 3 was the wettest day in the UK since records began in 1891, Met Office researchers have said.

The downpour began when storm Alex brought an average of 31.7mm of rain.

There was enough rainfall across the UK to fill Loch Ness, which is the largest lake in the UK by volume.

The rainy day beat the previous record holder from August 1986.

Dr Mark McCarthy, from the Met Office said that it was unusual to have such widespread, persistent rain across the whole of the UK.

He added: "So 31.7mm across the area of the UK equates to around 7.6 cubic kilometres of water by volume," he said, adding: "Loch Ness is around 7.4-7.5 cubic kilometres."

The weather has been ever-changing this year, especially when it comes to rainfall.

Storms Ciara and Dennis pushed February to the top of the records as the wettest month ever.

However May broke the record for sunniest calendar month, with 266 hours of sunshine.

As Autumn came, so did the rain - again!

Climate change - our planet heating up - can affect the weather.

Dr McCarthy said that researchers cann't say for sure what causes extreme weather:

"We can't make any definitive statements specifically about the attribution of this particular event on October 3".

"There's a general expectation that under our warming climate, we would expect to see increases in some types of extreme rainfall and rainfall events and we're expecting to have wetter winters overall, we could expect increases in these types of extremes."

While this record for the wettest day on average across the UK took 34 years to break, we might not be waiting quite that long to break it again.