Summer of 1924 was a stormy washout

There has been a widespread feeling that this summer was a damp squib, but 100 years ago the summer of 1924 was arguably worse — persistently dull, cool, wet and stormy. Perhaps there were hopes that the weather jinx had been broken when St Swithin’s Day on July 15 brought glorious bright sunshine. According to folklore that should have heralded 40 days of fine weather, but those hopes were dashed when it rained for 30 out of the next 40 days over many places, leaving the St Swithin’s legend in tatters.
The summer of 1924 was also plagued by violent thunderstorms with deluges of rain. “A thunderstorm of great severity, accompanied by a torrential downpour of rain and hail, broke over London yesterday afternoon,” reported the Times weather correspondent for July 22. Parts of the London Underground were flooded, lightning struck buildings causing considerable damage, and the Meteorological Office [now called the Met Office] even reported rare incidents of ball lightning in South Kensington and at Woking in Surrey.
A few days later, on July 29, another mighty thunderstorm turned the sky dark, “frequently pierced by vivid flashes of lightning, and almost continuous deafening thunder”, The Times reported. “Many omnibuses and other vehicles stopped altogether, the drivers choosing either to crouch right down in their seats or run for other shelter.”
The most extraordinary of the rainfalls was on August 18 when the village of Cannington near Bridgwater in Somerset was hit by an intense thunderstorm with crashing rains, and one observer described the rains as falling in solid sheets as if it had emptied from buckets. The village was submerged in 238.8mm of rain, setting a 24-hour rainfall record for August in the UK.
The rains unleashed floodwaters described as a big wave that left nearly all the houses in the village flooded, and some residents had to be rescued from the top floor of their homes. Roads turned into rivers, fields were submerged up to 6ft deep in water, and roadside earth banks collapsed. The Cannington 24-hour rainfall record stood until August 16, 2020, when East Wretham in Norfolk marginally set a record of 239.9mm.