I hadn’t heard of Brettenham before this Suffolk village recorded over 100mm of rain from the convergence line event on the afternoon of Sunday, July 26th.

A former Environment Agency observer recorded 181.3mm in 1hr 40mins (1640-1820).

Notable on its own but even more so given that Wattisham, an official station 7.3km to the south-east, recorded just 2.4mm at the same time.

Whilst intensely isolated events happen, and often go unnoticed if they occur in uninhabited areas, this one seems more severe than what has previously been recorded.

The greatest 24hr rainfall recorded, according to Robin Stirling’s Weather of Britain, was 279mm on July 18th 1955 in Dorset. The rainfall far more widespread than the event on Sunday.

The event in Suffolk was covered by the East Anglian Daily Times. A report that mentions ‘rain falling in sheets and roads turned into rivers’ can be found here.