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The Times reported (on 30th January 1883) the terrible floods that washed away the top part of the village of Brompton-on-Swale ...
Other "rainfall" observers around the North had reported deluges with snow already on the ground melting combined with heavy downpours during the days before.
26th January 1883 "... after a rapid thaw and heavy rain, parts of Isles, Gunnerside [built 1835] and other bridges were washed down..."
27th January 1883 - a rainfall observer at East Layton, west of Darlington, noted "... a gale, with heavy rain, occurred on the 27th, followed by destructive floods".
29th January 1883 - a rainfall observer at Skipton noted "By far the most severe flood during the year; the river was so swollen that Burnsall Bridge, which had withstood all floods for more than 200 years, was swept away; the flood water was higher than many fences, and farmers had their sheep carried over the hedges, walls etc"
The same day January 29, another rainfall observer at Bedale noted "An inch of rain falling on the deep snow on the ground produced the greatest flood since 1822; much stock was destroyed." There was widespread flooding across the North of England ... as reported in the Derbyshire Advertiser on 2nd Feb 1883.
The "rainfall observers" mentioned were part of the British Rainfall Organisation founded 160 years ago in 1860 by George James Symons to coordinate rainfall observations by volunteers “of both sexes, all ages, and all classes”. Every morning at 9am, hundreds of observers across the country (by 1900 there were 3,408 stations in Symons’s network) scurried into their back garden to inspect their rain gauges. They sent their results back to Symons, who analysed them and published them in British Rainfall magazine. In 1919 the BRO was taken over by the Met Office (who now make some of their rainfall data available online). However, ‘amateur’ observers still make important contributions to meteorology today.