The outstanding feature of this year’s weather was undoubtedly the devastating summer floods. But there was plenty of other weird weather across the UK.New year came in with a bang in Torbay, Devon, as a great big ball of light dropped out of the sky and exploded — a possible case of ball lightning. At the end of March, drivers across England and Wales found their cars covered in dust swept over from Sahara Dust in Libya.

April was bone-dry, the fourth-driest and warmest April on record. So the last thing anyone was expecting was the wettest May to July period to follow. In May a waterspout played around at Leith Docks, Edinburgh. But despite the black clouds and rain in June, a fantastic circle of light known as a halo was seen over Buxton, Derbyshire, created by ice crystals in high-altitude clouds.

A swarm of tornados descended across Central England on September 23, uprooting trees, turning over caravans and sending roof tiles flying, and in November a teenager washing her hair at home in Blandford, Dorset, got the shock of her life when lightning struck the house and shot through the shower head she was holding. It was also the month that the East Coast came close to flooding from a storm surge down the North Sea.