HOMES in Malmesbury were inundated with water on Tuesday when torrential rain brought by Storm Brendan caused flooding in parts of the town.

At least six properties in the St John’s Bridge area were affected after the river burst its banks and Malmesbury Victoria Football Club’s pitch was turned into a huge lake.

One woman saw the river lapping at her doorstep, but floodgates on the door kept the water out. Her neighbour was not so lucky.

Vics’ manager Wayne Kibble told the Gazette: “We have been lucky with water not going into the clubhouse this time. We will have to see what damage it’s done to the pitch once it’s fully drained.”

The Buildbase depot in Park Road was flooded and pallets of building materials could be seen sitting in the water and the recreation ground was also inundated.

It’s a bad start for 2020, when amateur weatherman Geoff Witts, from Steeple Ashton, who has been has been keeping track of rainfall and temperatures for more than 40 years, will continue monitoring local conditions. According to his figures 2019 was the wettest year since 2014, when 1,000m of rain fell.

Throughout the whole year, Mr Witts measured 785.1mm of rain. The average yearly rainfall for the past 69 years is 745.4mm.

He also discovered 2019 was far hotter than the average over the same period.

The hottest day of the year was July 25, when temperatures soared to a sweltering 32.5C. The average hottest day of the year since 1950 is 24.5C.

It wasn’t just the summer that was scorching either. In February, Mr Witts’ thermometers recorded 17.6C, when the average hottest temperature for that month is 11.3C.

As expected, July was the warmest month of 2019 with an average temperature of 18.9C.

The mean temperature throughout 2019 was 10.87C, compared to an average of 10.11C since 1950.

He said: “I’m not surprised that it’s getting so much warmer. It seems like global warming is very real and my readings are showing that.

“Every day at 9am I read the measures just outside my house.

“I love doing it, I’m a bit of a weather statistic nerd I suppose. I’ve always been interested in it.

“I have no plans of stopping soon either. I’ll keep recording the weather for as long as I can.”

As well a being a hotter year than normal, 2019 was also more rainy than average.

October had the worst weather, as Mr Witts recorded 132.5mm of rainfall which is 61.6mm more than the average rainfall for that month. The wettest day of the year was October 12, when there was 23.9mm of rain.

December was also particularly rainy with 120.2mm of rainfall compared to the month’s average of 79.7mm.

It wasn’t all doom and gloom however.

Mr Witts recorded that January 2019 was one of the driest since 1950.

He measured 29.1mm of rain throughout the month making January the driest month of the year. The average rainfall for a January is 73.7mm.

His statistics show that there was rain recorded on 191 days of the year.

Mr Witts even noted two days of snow in 2019.

The coldest day of 2019 was February 1 when the temperature plummeted to a brisk 0.8C, and to an even chillier -6.6C later that night.

January was the coldest month of the year with a mean temperature of 3.8C throughout, 0.6C colder than the average.