Eye-opening research has revealed that England and Wales is in for a stormy autumn and winter, with predictions of "rare" weather events which could be "much more extreme" than past storms and floods.

According to the Met Office, there is a one in three chance of at least one region experiencing new monthly rainfall record least from October to March.

The prediction follows a series of strong storms and widespread flooding during recent winters, including Storm Desmond which hit the north west in December 2015.

Since this succession of "rare" and "extreme" events, experts have researched a method to quantify the risk of heavy rainfall within the current climate - and the results are pretty stormy.

Professor Adam Scaife who leads this area of research at the Met Office said: "The new Met Office supercomputer was used to simulate thousands of possible winters, some of them much more extreme than we’ve yet witnessed.

"This gave many more extreme events than have happened in the real world, helping us work out how severe things could get."

The report titled UNprecedented Simulated Extremes using ENsembles (UNSEEN) reveals that the south east of England could see a 7% risk of record monthly rainfall.

This is even higher in some other regions of England and Wales which are predicted a 34% chance.

Doctor Vikki Thompson, lead author of the report, said: "Our computer simulations provided one hundred times more data than is available from observed records.

The report follows a series of storms and floods across the UK in recent years

"Our analysis showed that these events could happen at any time and it’s likely we will see record monthly rainfall in one of our UK regions in the next few years."

The name of the report was created by authors to "emphasize that this analysis anticipates possible events that have just not yet been seen."

It was also used as part of the recent UK Government National Flood Resilience Review (NFRR) when the Met Office was asked to estimate the potential likelihood and severity of record-breaking rainfall over the UK for the next 10 years.

According to the Met Office, this shows "that, even with the current climate, it is likely that there will be one or more monthly regional rainfall record events, in the coming decade."

It was added that this method can also be applied to assess other weather risks such as heat waves, droughts, and cold spells.

It could even help policy makers, contingency planners and insurers plan for future events.

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