"The Seasons Have Become Confused" - Individual Stories From The UK's Winter Of Endless Rain
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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.”
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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.
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“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.
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https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/feb/14/uk-bad-weather-rain-flood-warnings-struggling-business
