Last year was the wettest on record in Notts and could be sign of things to come
NOTTS officially had its wettest year on record in 2012, according to new figures from the Met Office.
A total of 910.6mm of rain fell across the county last year, with April being the wettest month when 158.9mm of rain was recorded.
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Clearing up: Susan Dawkins, daughter of Joan Kaye, 92, sweeping silt from her home.
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Washout: Andrea Beech clears flood water from Bingham Leisure Centre.
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Helping hand: A woman carries her dog across the flood water on Lambley High Street.
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Making the most of it: Children play by the River Trent at Gunthorpe
Previously the highest recorded rainfall for Notts had been in 1960 when 848.5mm fell.
Professor Julia Slingo, chief scientist at the Met Office, said: "The trend towards more extreme rainfall events is one we are seeing around the world, in countries such as India and China, and now potentially here in the UK.
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"Much more research is needed to understand more about the causes and potential implications.
"It's essential we look at how this may impact our rainfall patterns going forward over the next decade and beyond, so we can advise on the frequency of extreme weather in the future and the potential for more surface and river flooding."
June was the second wettest month for Notts, with 129.1mm of rain, while July saw 113.6mm.
During December, when the Trent rose to its sixth-highest recorded water levels since 1965, 109.3mm of rain fell.
The driest months in 2012 were February, with 16mm of rain, March with 32.5mm and May with 40.7mm.
Derbyshire and Leicestershire also has their wettest years on record, with 1,220.1mm and 921.7mm of rain falling respectively.
For Leicestershire this was the most rain in a year since 1960 when 910.3mm fell, while Derbyshire's previous wettest year was in 2000 when 1,155.7mm fell.
The flooding that followed the rain resulted in road closures and evacuations.
During the year 25 residents at the Hazelford Ferry Care Home in Bleasby, near Newark, were moved out, several homes in Zouch were evacuated and Joan Kaye, 92, was rescued from her home in Lowdham by firefighters when several inches of water poured down Southwell Road.
Her granddaughter Caroline Dawkins, 38, lives next door.
She said: "We've never known anything like it. It all happened really quickly.
"We just got her and the two dogs out. It's horrible because it's so fast."
Meanwhile a defence scheme costing £45 million was used for the first time in November and saved around 175 homes in Attenborough from being under inches of water, according to the Environment Agency.
Lee Rawlinson, area manager for the Environment Agency, was pleased the defences had prevented thousands of pounds of damage that flooding would have caused.
He said: "We had only introduced the systems three months ago, so we would have liked to see a bit more respite between their installation and them being used, but they did the job."
Farming and tourism were also hit by flooding.
Stragglethorpe farmer Peter Gadd, who runs Hollygate Farm, said he had recorded 73mm of rain on his farm in just five days during November, when 951mm of rain fell across Notts.
He said some farmers had struggled to sow crops this year because of wet weather in the summer, so some were now facing a "double whammy" of not being able to sow crops for next year.
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