Met Office: SIGNIFICANT WEATHER EVENT will hit UK in days as HUGE Atlantic storm ROARS in

Looks like Somerset and other flooded areas will have to brace themselves for more flooding.

The government should look at their tree clearing policies for the sake of the long term environment and sustainability of land currently in use as villages and towns.

www.express.co.uk...

A MASSIVE storm brewing in the Atlantic is heading directly for Britain - and shaping up to be the most destructive to hit the UK this year.

A massive Atlantic storm is set to slam straight into Britain this weekend.

Severe storm-force gales of up to 100mph will lash the coasts while devastating gusts of 70mph are expected inland.

Up to two inches of rain will pound flood-hit regions in a matter of hours on Friday night before yet another storm smashes into Britain on Saturday.

Worst hit will be the south and south-west, already reeling from weeks of rain which have triggered historic flooding.

The Met Office warned of a “significant” event with current weather warnings likely to be upgraded a more severe level-2 amber alerts.

Spokeswoman Laura Young said: “A very low depression is coming in from the Atlantic on Friday night which we are expecting to be significant.

“We are expecting very heavy downpours with 40mm expected to fall in three hours, up to 50mm [2 inches] in some parts.

“Regions which are not currently flooded could be affected, the unsettled weather is likely to continue into next week.

“There is also the risk of very strong winds along the coast and inland, this looks nastier than we have seen this week.”

Jonathan Powell, forecaster for Vantage Weather Services, warned Britain is braced for a repeat of the devastating October St Jude’s Day Storm.

He warned savage winds will be strong enough to tear down trees, damage buildings and whip up colossal 30-foot waves.

He said: “This is a real monster heading towards the UK on Friday, it is bigger than anything we have seen this year.

“Gusts will easily tip 100mph in exposed regions and along the coasts with 70mph possible inland and widespread around the UK.

“This is a very significant storm on the way and is capable of causing some real damage.”

The warning comes as Britain battles a week of wind and rain which is heaping misery in the south of the country.

Parts of Somerset have been left knee-deep in floodwater with some communities cut off after weeks of relentless downpours.

The Met Office has severe weather warnings for heavy rain in the region for the next four days as emergency services battle to contain the crisis.

The water flashing off the land suddenly disappeared when it reached the belts of trees the farmers had planted. This prompted a major research programme which produced the following astonishing results: water sinks into the soil under trees at 67 times the rate at which it sinks into the soil under grass.

The roots of the trees provide channels down which the water flows, deep into the ground. The soil there becomes a sponge, a reservoir that sucks up water and then releases it slowly. In the pastures, by contrast, the small, sharp hooves of the sheep puddle the ground, making it almost impermeable, a hard pan off which the rain gushes.
One of the research papers estimates that – even though only five per cent of the Pontbren land has been reforested – if all the farmers in the catchment did the same thing, flooding peaks downstream would be reduced by about 29 per cent. Full reforestation would reduce the peaks by about 50 per cent.

For decades the Government has been funding scientists working in the tropics and using their findings to advise other countries to protect the forests or to replant trees in the hills to prevent communities downstream being swept away. But we forgot to bring the lesson home.

Natural Resources Wales told me that these techniques ‘are hardwired into the actions we want land managers to undertake’. What it forgot to say is that all tree-planting grants in Wales have now been stopped. The offices responsible for administering them are closing down. If other farmers want to copy the Pontbren model, they must not only pay for the trees themselves, but they must also sacrifice the money they would otherwise have been paid for farming that land.
Here we approach the nub of the problem – for there is an unbreakable rule laid down by the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy. If you want to receive your single farm payment – by far the biggest component of farm subsidies – that land has to be free from what it calls ‘unwanted vegetation’. Land covered by trees is not eligible. The subsidy rules have enforced the mass clearance of vegetation from the hills. Just as the tree-planting grants have stopped, the land-clearing grants have risen.

Despite the fact that water sinks into the soil under trees at 67 times the rate of soil under grass, farmers are not eligible for 'single farm payment' from the EU if the land is covered by trees+5

In his speech to the Oxford Farming Conference, made during the height of the floods, the Environment Secretary, Owen Paterson, boasted that hill farmers ‘on the least productive land’ will now receive ‘the same direct payment rate on their upland farmland as their lowland counterparts’.
In other words, even in places where farming makes no sense because the land is so poor, farmers will now be paid more to keep animals there. But to receive this money, they must first remove the trees and scrub that absorb the water falling on the hills.

And that’s just the start of it.

Governments can now raise the special mountain payments, whose purpose is to encourage farming at the top of the watersheds, from £208 per hectare to £371.
This money should be renamed the flooding subsidy: it pays for the wreckage of homes, the evacuation of entire settlements, the drowning of people who don’t get away in time.

Read more: www.dailymail.co.uk... -UK-farmers-destroy-trees-soak-storm.html#ixzz2sP2Msksv
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What, another one!

shaping up to be the most destructive to hit the UK this year.

Since it is only February that shouldn't be hard.

The met office seems to be saying this every other week.

P

When will it end!?

Be safe all my brothers and sisters across the pond. My thoughts and prayers are with you.

I'm sure they are used to big storms.

Does the strategic caps in the title irk anyone else?
Obvious media hyping tool.

Good job i live on a hill

Getting quite windy at the moment too. Have a look here to see whats coming

magicseaweed.com...#?chartType=WMAG&_suid=1391559679207007809416511761968

you can play it right up to the weekend. Better to copy and paste the link. If you do just click the link, click on the wind bit.


Edit: I'd say it's going to be proper windy night here dayn sayth

Kinda funny how people grow roots in an area and then are unable to deal with Climate Change. IT is a constant reminder to me as to why early people were nomadic. Kinda endemic of the New Normal of Humanity. Bunch up in a small area and expect the environment to not ever change.

Gonna be fun to see Manhattan under water someday.

reply to post by pot8er


It has got very windy here in Wiltshire.

Looks like the same storm that's approaching.

reply to post by Mamatus


These flooding and severe weather events have increased a lot recently.

Here in the UK the land is key to maintaining settlements, once the farmers are paid to clear the trees off higher ground, the water planes off onto the land below where the villages and towns are.

If they keep the trees there would be far less flooding, it's nature's way.

reply to post by Jefferton


I find the caps irritating on media titles but sometimes C&P does a good job of portraying the article as it is, rather than my interpretation, it also prevents my hater followers griping about title inaccuracies.

reply to post by Jefferton


The flooding in certain areas is an issue, a lot of homes ruined, government policies to blame and lack of government response has meant some places have been flooded for more than a month.

A lot of cliff erosion and stacks being ruined as well as making the farmland unusable for sometimes entire seasons, affecting farmers, food availability and prices.

All these events are really highlighting the fragility of the ecosystem and the dependence of humanity on nature and the knowledge of living WITH instead of AGAINST the environment.

www.dailymail.co.uk...

reply to post by theabsolutetruth


Here in central Scotland we're used to storms, but this winter has been weird. We've had constant strong winds from the south-east, instead of the prevailing winds from the west or south-west, and continual rain, a higher temperature than normal, very little sunshine, and hardly any frost or snow. The low pressure areas that come east across the North Atlantic have usually crossed Scotland or passed to the north between us and Iceland, but now they are heading for London instead.

reply to post by theabsolutetruth


Got any other sources? I check Accuweather and this storm wasn't looking "Significant" . Not buying into the fear!

A quick-hitting storm will take a more southerly track on Thursday, leading to a chilly rain on Thursday afternoon into Thursday night across Wales and England. Rainfall will average 10-20 mm (0.40-0.80 inch) from this event.
Yet another storm will approach from the Atlantic Ocean on Friday, delivering a shot of rainfall and strong winds across the entire region on Friday night into Saturday. Once again Ireland and all of the United Kingdom will be at risk for localized flooding problems as rainfall up to 30 mm (1.18 inches).
Strong winds will batter the region with sustained winds over 65 kph (40 mph) at times along with gusts upwards of 95 kph (60 mph).

Link

The Express is always hyping weather stories and confusing credible professional forecasts with those made by charlatans. We are in a run of quite appalling weather, and Saturday's storm will add to flooding and possibly cause some wind damage. But the Met Office is not warning of impending apocalypse. Jonathan Powell, who has zero credibility as a forecaster, is yet again spouting sensationalist garbage.

The trouble is, when the forecast goes wrong, it's the Met Office and other professional forecasters who get the blame, not those who base their pronouncements on guesswork and bad science.

Urrrgh im in somerset right on the coast, its seems like it has been raning forever. Its just getting depressing

Flyinghaggis
reply to post by theabsolutetruth

 

Here in central Scotland we're used to storms, but this winter has been weird. We've had constant strong winds from the south-east, instead of the prevailing winds from the west or south-west, and continual rain, a higher temperature than normal, very little sunshine, and hardly any frost or snow. The low pressure areas that come east across the North Atlantic have usually crossed Scotland or passed to the north between us and Iceland, but now they are heading for London instead.

I grew up in central Scotland on the coast and recall practically every winter in the 70's /80's as having snow, being very cold, not all that rainy compared to normal levels of Scottish rain, but always similar, sort of reliable.

I have relatives and friends there so I hear about the weather there often, lots of storms there in recent months.

Here in Wiltshire, half an hour to Oxford and Bath and an hour from London, the weather has been similar to Scotland this year, endless rain, warmer than average and a lot of storms. Travelling through from Somerset then Wiltshire to Oxfordshire there was vast flooding, agricultural land under a few feet of water for miles, as well as flooding in central Oxford and the villages in the Somerset levels.

The weather has got more unpredictable in my opinion.

whywhynot
reply to post by theabsolutetruth

 

Got any other sources? I check Accuweather and this storm wasn't looking "Significant" . Not buying into the fear!

A quick-hitting storm will take a more southerly track on Thursday, leading to a chilly rain on Thursday afternoon into Thursday night across Wales and England. Rainfall will average 10-20 mm (0.40-0.80 inch) from this event.
Yet another storm will approach from the Atlantic Ocean on Friday, delivering a shot of rainfall and strong winds across the entire region on Friday night into Saturday. Once again Ireland and all of the United Kingdom will be at risk for localized flooding problems as rainfall up to 30 mm (1.18 inches).
Strong winds will batter the region with sustained winds over 65 kph (40 mph) at times along with gusts upwards of 95 kph (60 mph).

Link

I don't normally read the express but I was in a hurry and posted it when I saw it and only because it has a video from the met office and their spokesperson advised it is a ''significant'' event, which ordinarily I probably wouldn't post about but given that there are reportedly more than 15,000 homes without electricity due to the weather in the SW and that there are still places very near to me still flooded, Prince Charles visited there today, and the fact that even mild flooding here affects travel on the main routes from the west to London, which goes from Cardiff to London via various places, both on trains and the M4. This area is a commuter zone for London and trains are packed and expensive enough, but when there are cancellations it makes commuting that bit more impossible.

All in all, I would like it to be a bit of sensationalism from the Express or over estimation from the Met but forewarned is forearmed and putting out information like this isn't scaremongering of any sort from me, just good to let others know in advance, sometimes it can take a few days at least for people preparing their flood defenses and can affect other arrangements. For example people might like to make sure their elderly relatives, friends and neighbours or the vulnerable are well stocked for the weekend and don't need to brave the storm or floods, the guy that recently drowned in Oxford did so as he drove his mobility vehicle on a flooded path, they both ended in the river. Had he been forewarned perhaps he wouldn't have ventured out that day.

reply to post by SummerLightning


The met office spokesperson said ''significant event'' that's the part that matters in the article, any reporters interpretation, I tend to ignore.

I didn't see it being described as ''apocalypse'' anywhere in the article and I didn't suggest it either.

SummerLightning
The Express is always hyping weather stories and confusing credible professional forecasts with those made by charlatans. We are in a run of quite appalling weather, and Saturday's storm will add to flooding and possibly cause some wind damage. But the Met Office is not warning of impending apocalypse. Jonathan Powell, who has zero credibility as a forecaster, is yet again spouting sensationalist garbage.

The trouble is, when the forecast goes wrong, it's the Met Office and other professional forecasters who get the blame, not those who base their pronouncements on guesswork and bad science.

I didn't know the particulars which you supplied but in looking at other weather sites, the source that this thread was based on felt just like what you described. Good job!

reply to post by theabsolutetruth

All in all, I would like it to be a bit of sensationalism from the Express or over estimation from the Met but forewarned is forearmed and putting out information like this isn't scaremongering of any sort from me, just good to let others know in advance, sometimes it can take a few days at least for people preparing their flood defenses and can affect other arrangements. For example people might like to make sure their elderly relatives, friends and neighbours or the vulnerable are well stocked for the weekend and don't need to brave the storm, the guy that recently drowned in Oxford did so as he drove his mobility vehicle on a flooded path, they both ended in the river. Had he been forewarned perhaps he wouldn't have ventured out that day.

The problem with your theory of over reporting the storm (or anything else) is that pretty soon people ignore the warnings (chicken little syndrome) and that is a bell that is very hard to un-ring. Then when a real storm comes everyone ignores the warning. Best to just report the absolute truth.