It was a deluge. More water flowed out of English rivers during one day last month than ever seen in a day before. As storm Desmond drenched the UK and Ireland on 5 December, rivers across England discharged a third more water than the previous maximum, according to new data released by the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH). This was just one of the records broken by freak weather last month - the UK's hottest and wettest December on record. Three major storms - Desmond, Eva and Frank - tracked across the UK and Ireland during December, creating what the CEH called "extraordinary" hydrological conditions. On Honiston Pass in Cumbria, Desmond delivered more rain in 24 hours than previously seen anywhere in the country - 34.1 centimetres. The peak record flows on the rivers Tyne, Lune and Eden during storm Desmond, each at around 1700 cubic metres a second, were the three highest flows ever recorded on rivers in England and Wales, and more than 30 times the rivers' respective average flows, says the CEH. As these and other rivers breached their banks, some 16,000 properties flooded. What caused the record rains? A separate assessment by meteorologists at the University of Oxford last week reported that while "random weather variability played a large role", wider climate conditions, including those from human-made climate change, increased the chances of the record rains by between 50 and 75 per cent.
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