The first wet month since February, and 120 litres still missing

On Friday the Deutscher Wetterdienst published its preliminary review of October, drawn from roughly 2,000 measuring stations¹. The headline is a small relief: about 76 litres of rain per square metre fell across Germany, 36% more than the 1961–1990 October mean of 56 litres, and about a fifth more than the 1991–2020 mean¹. It was the first month since February in which Germany as a whole got more rain than its reference value¹.

The small print. Read one paragraph further and the relief is rationed. For the year so far, Germany is still about 120 litres per square metre short of the long-term averages, the DWD writes, and soil moisture has not recovered in many places, especially in the southern half and the east¹. The rivers say the same: the service notes “very low” water levels on the large rivers¹. One wet month has not paid back half a year of dry ones.

The map. The rain fell by postcode, not by nation. The north and west sometimes got three times as much as the east¹. Schleswig-Holstein was by far the wettest state, at 129 litres against a mean of 73; Hamburg got almost 80% more than usual¹. Berlin got about 31 litres, the least of any state, and parts of the Polish border area under 20¹. Brandenburg, for the second October running, was among the driest regions¹.

The warmth. The month averaged 10.6 °C, 1.6 degrees above the 1961–1990 mean and 1.2 degrees above 1991–2020¹. It opened with 27.5 °C at Mehringen in Saxony-Anhalt on the 1st and touched −3.1 °C at Dippoldiswalde-Reinberg in Saxony on the 20th¹. In North Rhine-Westphalia, every month this year has been warmer than the reference period so far¹. The sun shone about 122 hours, 12–13% more than usual: the eighth sunnier-than-average month in a row¹.

What to do with it. If you garden, farm or simply water a tree on your street, the regional line matters more than the national one: a wet October in Kiel tells a vegetable grower near Frankfurt (Oder) nothing. The DWD publishes a soil-moisture viewer for exactly this purpose¹. The figures are preliminary; the last two days of the month were filled in from forecasts, and the service says so in plain words¹. That candour is the most reassuring line in the release. A weather service that marks its own estimates is one you can plan with.