Edit - i should clarify, im referring to comments on this forum rather than official statistics. 

Would be really interested to see your source for that, can't find anything on the MET or elsewhere that describes as anything other than a prolonged dry spell?? 

It’s to do with water availability. Nothing to do with a specific number of dry days, 

Yes, I agree, it would be a seriously flawed metric if all it catered for was consecutive dry days.

Sorry, meant to say that people generally define drought in terms of a certain number of days. I could be completely wrong about that of course, and I will apologize if I am but that is how I have always seen that until now.

How I got that definition is by punching "absolute drought definition UK" into a Google search and when you do that and read the resulting AI output, you will see that an absolute drought is defined by the Met Office as a period of 15 or more consecutive days with a rainfall total of no more than 0.2 mm.

If you have 0.2 mm of rain, that is technically not the same as being completely dry but since that is barely anything at all, that is as good in my books as being completely dry just in the same way that we can say that 0.999 is approximately equal to 1 even though those two numbers aren't exactly equal to each other.

Going by that, I think that it stands to reason that a drought can be defined as a certain consecutive dry days and that is the point which I was trying to make here.

Uk will never experience African drought as we don’t get months of dry very hot and sunny weather.  I experienced drought some years in Cyprus and know the works of it.  Here never with so much ocean water around us and too much rains like this month so no way to see drought here.  Just lower rivers or lakes levels at times but recover quickly.  Longest dry days was 60 in 2018 but by August onward was very wet throughout.

But go back to 1893 - 73 days, and not a million miles from FW

The British record for the longest period of drought is held, perhaps surprisingly, by Mile End in east London. An exceptionally dry spring in 1893 led to an amazing 73 consecutive days without rain from Saturday 4th March until Monday 15th May. High pressure was firmly in control across much of northwest Europe, bringing harsh frosts overnight but also some unusually warm days.

https://diamondgeezer.blogspot.com/2018/07/drought.html 

Always remember well about this place Mile End and their longest dry days, i read about British records including about Tonbridge 38.1C 100.5F record, that year was very dry year too.  I wonder if there a weather station in Mile End or not anymore? We don't hear about Mile End at all anymore.

With that in mind, SEPA have just released their latest weekly water scarcity report which can be viewed here .

Indeed, these reports have been quite mixed and what I have mentioned about the situation here in Edinburgh has clearly been taken into consideration as that lack of rainfall which I have just mentioned, has now resulted in our water scarcity status being upgraded from early warning status to alert status. This means that the whole of the Lothian region is now at alert status along with Fife, Clackmannanshire, Tayside and Aberdeenshire.

These reports are always warning that without any recovery in the situation, many areas risk having their status being upgraded with that only getting worse over time as long as that continues, so what has happened here in Edinburgh this week is just one example of that. In addition to that, there is also one area in the west of Scotland which has had its status upgraded from normal to early warning status for exactly that same reason.

However, there has also been a number of areas where has been some recovery as these areas have been getting higher rainfall totals in the past week and this has resulted in a number of areas having their status being downgraded from early warning status back to normal, thus showing that as long we get that rainfall, recovery will take place which will result in more areas returning to normal.

River levels are generally low to very low in the shorter term and although groundwater levels are still normal in most areas for now, there are some low to very low groundwater levels already showing up in the Fife and Angus areas in particular.

Not particularly 😂 As you say about 20 miles directly west of here with the officially UK driest place, Shoeburyness 16 miles ESE.

That has been my thinking up until now as well although that was only really just on the back of my mind as we still have this summer to get through before we get to that, hence the reason why I don't normally start thinking about the winter until we get into the preceding autumn before that.

Nevertheless, my thoughts go back to the winter of 2015/16 which was very mild and virtually completely snowless with December 2015 going down as what is still currently our mildest December on record. That was also a particularly wet spell, especially around the period when we were impacted by Storm Denis (that was also the first winter after the Met Office in conjunction with Met Eireann first introduced the current storm naming system).

With that, the worst affected area by flooding was Cumbria in NW England but even here in Scotland, the River Teviot burst its banks in the town of Hawick in the Scottish Borders with quite a lot of money being spent since then in order to bolster the flood defences in that area in response to that particular event.

With this latest El Nino event, I can see another winter like that occurring again and with ongoing climate change, I can also see some more high temperature records being broken at that time once again as a result. At the same time, I can also see that possibly being a very wet period with the risk of further flooding.

All of that if it came off, would be very bad news for cold weather fans who like to see a lot of cold weather and snow in the winter months but at the same time, a really wet period around then might well be what finally renders this thread as being relevant from that time onwards if that hasn't happened by then, so that would be good news in that respect.

It also increases the risk of heavy snow if we get lucky with a cold push from the east, battleground type scenario, as there'll be more moisture around. Based on the past couple of decades, though, I'll not get my hopes up!

There were a few areas which had their status downgraded from early warning status to alert status including the Outer Hebrides but apart from that, everything else is completely unchanged from last week.

Yesterday was our wettest day for quite a while and by quite a considerable amount as well, so that should help a bit when it comes to next week's report but for now, Edinburgh remains at alert status for water scarcity.

Once again, many places further to our west have been doing quite well for rainfall whereas the east has been seeing very little of that rainfall.

River levels are generally reported to be low to very low, especially in central and eastern parts of the country.

Groundwater levels are largely normal for just now though, although some very low groundwater levels are still showing up in parts of Fife and Angus.

Rainfall has generally been around normal over much of the country since the last report but the hot spell over the past few days has made quite a big impact on this week's report, especially in the east of Scotland.

The result of this is that there aren't any locations which have had their status downgraded this week but a number of areas have had their status upgraded.

Indeed, East Lothian has now has had it status upgraded from alert status to moderate water scarcity status, and is the first area to be classed at that level or higher this year. If dry conditions persist over much of the country as well, that area is unlikely to be the only one to classed at those higher levels.

In addition to that, there were three areas including the Borders which had their status upgraded from early warning status to alert status with Edinburgh remaining at alert status.

Finally, there was also one area which had its status upgraded from normal to early warning status.

River levels continue to be low to very low and although the groundwater levels are largely normal, there continues to be some very low groundwater levels in the Fife and Angus area.

The BBC have this image of lightning over Weymouth with the caption

Thunderstorms have rocked parts of the UK this week (seen here over Weymouth on Thursday) Pic taken from Portland looking north.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjwgynnwyw2o 

I live to the right of that flash and not surprisingly, had no rain from that solitary cell. But for those who enjoyed it, the rain must have been useful for their gardens, that's if they are keen gardeners. And many are not and might prefer a long dry.

Yeah, a very wet autumn/winter period is a possibility??

That's what one might hope for but no two years are identical. Without January and February this year being so wet we would by now be in 1976 territory but on steroids. We should as a country have a massive water catchment plan already underway. Without water, we're stuffed.

I hope it's not but it feels that way. Unless you've got lots of butts just one isn't going to last more than a few days unless you only need to water one pot. We missed the storms here, including the mega one that ran through Somerset a few days before the mega hot.

In the past week, there has been some decent rainfall in many areas which has resulted in a few areas having their water scarcity status downgraded to normal status from early warning status.

These areas have mostly been in the north and west of Scotland whilst some parts of the east of Scotland in particular are still struggling to see all that much in the way of rainfall. The end result of this is that another area to the SE of Inverness has had its water scarcity status upgraded from from alert status to moderate water scarcity status. This means that there are now two areas which are at moderate water scarcity status with the other such area being in East Lothian. In addition to that, one area in the Moray Firth area has it status upgraded from early warning status to alert status.

It turns out that there are now only three areas in Scotland which are at early warning status and a number of areas in the east and SE of Scotland which are at alert status including Edinburgh and the Borders. The rest of Scotland including all of the west and north of Scotland are at normal status, and are therefore completely unaffected by water scarcity for now.

River levels continue to be very low across the east of Scotland but very high in the west with rather mixed conditions in the Central Belt and the Highlands.

Groundwater levels are still largely normal across large parts of the country, but with very low levels still persisting in parts of Fife and Angus.