Month of rain falls in just two days
The South-East was drenched with its heaviest spell of rain for three years over the weekend.
According to weather experts, more than one-and-a-half times the average amount of rain for the whole of November fell during two days of continuous downpours, causing road closures and rail disruption.
Surrey bore the brunt of the bad weather, with 84 millimetres falling in Charlwood over the weekend, and more than 70mm in New Malden. Kent and East Sussex were also drenched.
The wet weather brought chaos to parts of the capital. In west London traffic was brought to a standstill after floods closed the A3220 - one of the capital's busiest roads - from the Holland Park roundabout to the A40 for more than 24 hours from Saturday afternoon.
Traffic coming into London from the M4 was also forced to travel at a crawl because of the quantities of water pouring onto the road surface.
All trains in and out of Waterloo and Victoria were suspended, affecting hundreds of services to Kent, Surrey, Hampshire and Sussex, as well as the Eurostar and local journeys, after the downpour caused gas leak alarms to go off in Battersea.
On the Tube, St Paul's, Brixton and Bethnal Green stations were all closed yesterday because of flooding.
Forecasters said today would be largely dry, but more heavy rain was expected tomorrow, continuing until the weekend.
A spokesman for the London Weather Centre said: "We have had a colossal amount of rain. Up until this weekend this year was set to be the driest for many years - if not a record dry year. Now this rain might put us on course for an average year.
"Some areas of London have had the same amount of rain in a couple of hours as we had during the whole of September.
"We are very fortunate that we have had a dry year because if this rain had fallen in 2000 when everything was already saturated it would have been a disaster."
The rain began on Friday evening after a weather front moved in from the Atlantic and settled over the South East - while much of the rest of the country had a pleasant weekend.
The Environment Agency had, by last night, put 52 areas in the Thames region on flood watch - including New Malden, South Chingford, Streatham, and Harrow - as well as 19 areas in East Anglia.
Flood watch is the lowest of three states of alert meaning there is a possibility of flooding.
An Environment Agency spokesman said: "We expect the levels in streams and small rivers to rise and some may flow over their banks, but there is no risk of properties flooding at the moment."
The downpour led to at least two road deaths. A man and a woman were killed when a van ploughed into their Mercedes yesterday on the M40 near Bicester in Oxfordshire.
