YOU may have noticed it’s been rather wet of late, and it’s not been much fun!

Apparently, it’s not our wettest winter, that occurred in 2013-14, but it must be close. That’s especially true for Cornwall where some places have had twice the usual rainfall. It’s reported some parts of Bodmin Moor have not had a dry day this year (as of the time of writing).

If you go back a bit further in time, say 350 million years, things were even damper. This was the Carboniferous period, when what is now Britain was the southern margin of a super-continent called Laurasia. We were initially just south of the equator, in the tropics, and drifted slowly north during the 60 million years the period lasted. We finished up north of the equator in a slightly drier climate. Britain continues to slowly drift to this day.

The rocks deposited in this period formed much of the north of England, the millstone grit of the Pennines and the limestone of the Yorkshire Dales. Also deposited in this period were the coal seams that eventually led to the country being the biggest coal producer in the world.

The coal was formed in swamps that existed due to the hot, humid and very wet climate. The limestone was formed first, in warm shallow seas, and then the sediments with the coal in deltas, fed by rivers created from the rain.

We probably had a climate similar to present-day Singapore, with about 80 inches of rain a year – about twice what we get, even in a wet year.

So, it’s true to say, whilst we do moan about the weather, it could have been worse 350 million years ago – although, it was hot, at least. No thanks, I’ll stick with this.