We tend to think of April as being one of the less extreme months, weather wise. And usually it is: a mixture of Chaucer’s sweet April showers and spells of sunshine, leavened by light southerly breezes, bringing back the birds from Africa.

That is the theory. In practice, April’s weather can be just as fickle as any other month. And in the first year of the new millennium, it was the wettest April on record across much of the UK.

The England and Wales precipitation series began in 1766, yet is still used by the Met Office to assess rainfall records (be they droughts or downpours). Taking the average across the whole area, a total of 143mm (more than 5.6in) of rain fell in April 2000. This easily beat previous wet Aprils, such as 1782, 1818 and more recently 1998, all of which topped the 130mm mark. The highest figures were in the south, with Bournemouth, Bristol and Southampton all getting more rain than elsewhere.

In comparison, typical April rainfall is roughly 40-80mm, while in some years it can drop as low as 10mm – barely noticeable at all.

• Stephen Moss will be one of the panel of Weatherwatch contributors taking part in Freak Weather in History at the British Library on Wednesday 2 May, at 7pm