SUFFOLK awoke to rain today – the first significant fall for a month.Evening Star weatherman Ken Blowers revealed just under a fifth of an inch of rain fell overnight.

SUFFOLK awoke to rain today – the first significant fall for a month.

Evening Star weatherman Ken Blowers revealed just under a fifth of an inch of rain fell overnight.

Mr Blowers also revealed other remarkable statistics of a remarkable year – the last seven months on the trot have all seen below average rainfall and the last time we had an inch of rain was December last year.

He said: "We badly need this rain. Farmers need it, growers need it, horticulturists need it, smallholders need it."

And it seems those who need more of the wet stuff are likely to see it over the next few days.

Weather fronts heading our way are promising more downpours, although the summer will not be over completely as temperatures are likely to rise.

Mr Blowers said: "There's more of an autumnal look to the weather. There's another area of cloud with some rain coming tomorrow and the outlook is that it will be rather changeable."

But while gardeners might be thanking the heavens for the rain, our water suppliers coped much better with the summer heatwave.

A spokeswoman for Anglian Water said underground and surface reservoirs were all still well stocked.

She said last year's wet winter and heavy investment in preventing leaks had contributed to a healthy situation.

She said: "We've had no issues at all with the weather this year. It's been a very hot and dry summer, but our reservoirs have been fine.

"Customers have been taking our advice about not wasting water and we now have the lowest rate of leakage in the country.

"We spent £16million last year on improving our leakage as we couldn't very well ask customers to conserve water unless we were doing it as well."