On 4–6 December 2015, the storm "Desmond" caused very heavy rainfall in northern England and Scotland, which led to widespread flooding. Here we provide an initial assessment of the influence of anthropogenic climate change on the likelihood of one-day precipitation events averaged over an area encompassing northern England and southern Scotland using data and methods available immediately after the event occurred. The analysis is based on three independent methods of extreme event attribution: historical observed trends, coupled climate model simulations and a large ensemble of regional model simulations. All three methods agree that the effect of climate change is positive, making precipitation events like this about 40 % more likely, with a provisional 2.5–97.5 % confidence interval of 5–80 %.