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During protracted dry spells, there is considerable interest from water managers, media and the public in when and how drought termination (DT) will occur. Robust answers to these questions require better understanding of the hydroclimatic drivers of DT than currently available. Integrated vapour transport (IVT) has been found to drive DT in Western North America, but evidence elsewhere is lacking. To evaluate this association for the British–Irish Isles, event coincidence analysis is applied to 354 catchments in the UK and Ireland over the period 1900–2010 using ERA-20C reanalysis IVT data and 7589 DT events extracted from reconstructed river flow series. Linkages are identified for 53% of all DT events across all catchments. Associations are particularly strong for catchments in western and southern regions and in autumn and winter. In Western Scotland, 80% of autumn DTs are preceded by high IVT, whilst in …