Derry making a splash as it is named the wettest place in UK

A new study has found Derry literally stormed its way to the top of the charts with an average of 147 rainy days per yer year.

But every cloud has a silver lining, and the city’s wet weather is also partly responsible for its profusion of beautiful outdoor floral displays and landscaped parks.

While Manchester is often crowned as the rainiest city in the UK, it doesn’t even make the top 10 in the Budget Direct study of the wettest cities.

No other city in the north makes the top ten in the UK, with Derry followed in second place by the capital of the Scottish Highhlands, Inverness, then Preston, Liverpool, Lancaster, Glasgow, Bangor (Wales), Newport, Swansea and Stirling.

To see where the rain was falling, Neomam Studios, on behalf of Budget Direct, used Climate Data to count the number of rainy days per year (with at least 1 mm of rain or snow) for 64,429 cities around the world. The study looked at countries right across the globe.

However the Maiden City couldn’t claim the top spot in Ireland with Carna in Connemara, County Galway doused in 160 days of rainfall a year making it the wettest place in Europe.

While Derry makes the top ten in Europe, Europe’s wettest national cities are spread across the continent, with the top four covering the west (Carna, Ireland, 160 days), north (Bergen, Norway, 156), centre (Glarus, Switzerland, 153) and east (Akhaltsikhe, Georgia, 152) of the continent. The southern cities of Linares (Spain, 145) and Domodossola (Italy, 144) are also in the top 10.

A spokesperson for Budget Direct said: “Today, rain is a state of crisis. In the Chinese city of Zhengzhou, 25 inches of rain in a single day this summer claimed dozens of lives. This was in the wake of Germany’s deadliest floods in half a century. Last year, enough rain to fill Loch Ness fell on the UK in 24 hours, the country’s wettest day on record.

“The climate crisis has intensified the likelihood of heavy rainfall around the world.”

Key Findings in the study confirmed that the wettest city in the world is Buenaventura in Colombia, where it rains 258 days per year.

Australia’s rainiest city is Cairns in Queensland, with 117 days of precipitation.

The wettest city in the US is Hilo, Hawaii (211 days).

The world’s least rainy ‘wettest cities’ are Riffa (Bahrain) and Al Khor (Qatar), with 10 rainy days each.

It also suggests the north of Africa is the driest region, while parts of Asia and South America to have the wettest cities.

Surprising findings see snowy Greenland among the driest areas, but this is changing due to climate change.

But it is central Europe that has hit the deadlines most recently, with hundreds killed across Germany and Belgium in the July 2021 floods – Europe’s 10th deadliest in a century. Belgium’s wettest city, Malmedy (131 days), only gets around half the rainy days of world number one Buenaventura, but the trouble is that these relatively dry European landscapes are not used to extreme rainfall, which is now occurring in widespread, sustained downfalls rather than more localised, passing thunderstorms, the report states.

For full report see: www.budgetdirect.com.au/home-contents-insurance/research/wettest-cities.html