England’s drought has worsened again, with 19 reservoirs or reservoir groups now less than half full and Yorkshire becoming the 11th Environment Agency area to enter drought.
National reservoir storage has fallen to 54%, down another 1.3 percentage points in a week and now around 21% below the seasonal average. Only four reservoirs increased their storage during the latest reporting period while the rest continued to fall.
Eight reservoirs or reservoir groups are now classed as exceptionally low, including Abberton and Hanningfield in the east, Ardingly in the south-east, Clatworthy, Colliford and Wimbleball in the south-west, the Dove Group in the Midlands and United Utilities’ Pennines Group.
Successive Environment Agency reports showed 14 reservoirs or groups below half full in late September, rising to 16 the following week and now 19.
Yorkshire moved into drought status on 9 October after months of low rainfall left river and reservoir levels under sustained pressure. It joins East Anglia, Hertfordshire and North London, Thames, Devon and Cornwall, the West Midlands, Wessex, Kent and South London, Solent and South Downs, the East Midlands and Lincolnshire and Northamptonshire.
Other parts of the country remain in prolonged dry weather, including the North East, Cumbria and Lancashire and Greater Manchester, Merseyside and Cheshire, showing how widely the effects of the dry year are still being felt.
Recent rain has done little to change the overall picture, England received only around 10% of its normal October rainfall during the first part of the month and river flows remained normal or lower at every monitoring site covered by the latest weekly report.
Nineteen river monitoring sites were classed as notably low and seven were exceptionally low, while groundwater is continuing its normal seasonal decline from an already depleted starting point. Parts of the chalk aquifer are also now classed as exceptionally low.
The environmental impact is becoming more serious too, The Environment Agency has recorded 396 confirmed drought and dry-weather incidents so far this year, already higher than the total recorded across the whole of both 2022 and 2025.
Those incidents include 39 confirmed algal events, 96 involving dead fish and 185 linked to abstraction or low river flows, showing the drought is affecting ecosystems as well as water supplies.
Water companies continue to operate temporary use bans across large parts of England while drought permits and orders are being progressed in some of the hardest-hit areas.
The focus now is on what happens through autumn and winter, when reservoirs, rivers and groundwater would normally begin to recover.
After such a dry year the Environment Agency says significant and sustained rainfall will be needed and for some parts of southern and eastern England, a few wet weeks simply will not be enough.
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