To call this August a washout is putting it mildly. Day after day of pouring rain is making this a month to forget. Farmers are struggling to get their wet harvests in, ice-cream sales are down in the dumps and summer fêtes have ended in tea tents in soggy disarray. After all these woes, surely this August must have broken a record for rainfall in the UK? And yet a look at the archives reveals something quite astonishing — this August will probably be only the wettest August since 2004.

That summer of four years ago started off reasonably bright but steadily went downhill. July was showery but August turned incredibly wet, with a hefty 156mm (6.1in) average rainfall across England and Wales. Torrential downpours caused bouts of flooding across Britain, but the most dramatic was the flashflood at Boscastle, Cornwall, on August 16.

It is unlikely that England and Wales will come close to breaching that rainfall tally of 2004. The next few days look reasonably dry and, dare it be said, even warm and sunny. The exception is the North, and particularly Scotland, where heavy rains and floods are making life a misery. But even with that sorry state of affairs, the rainfall averaged over the whole UK for August does not look like it will be record breaking.

However, there is another feature of this August that sets it apart from 2004 — it is spectacularly gloomy. Sunshine is in such short supply that it would not be surprising if there were premature cases of seasonal affective disorder, which can happen in bleak summer months. This summer really does feel like a reminder of some of the atrocious summers of the past.