“Drip, drip, drop, little April shower, what can compare to your beautiful sound?” So goes the chirpy refrain from Bambi about the joys of springtime precipitation. But the rest of us, living outside the world of Disney, have clothes to worry about.

Besides, it’s only going to get worse. According to “Detection of Human Influence on 20th Century Precipitation”, a paper published last year in Nature, rising greenhouse gas emissions are likely to mean increases in rainfall. “In Britain, wetter winters are expected, which will lead to more extreme rainfall,” said Peter Scott, a co-author of the paper and a climate scientist at the University of Reading.