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

Who now still thinks global warming is not an issue? The North Atlantic is COLD water and large low pressure accompanied by warmer air is creating these huge, high energy storms. Sounds like it's almost too late and we will be burdened by these typs of weather pheromone for sometime. Until at least we can restore some sort of balance.

wrkn4livn
Who now still thinks global warming is not an issue? The North Atlantic is COLD water and large low pressure accompanied by warmer air is creating these huge, high energy storms. Sounds like it's almost too late and we will be burdened by these typs of weather pheromone for sometime. Until at least we can restore some sort of balance.

Two things wrong with this.

1) The gulf stream is warmer water which gives the UK its temperate climate.

2) This is caused by variations in the Jet Stream, and it was predicted to happen last year by some meteorologists, when the weather was also affected by the Jet Stream which is believed to be cyclical, like El Nino.

A video here on the recent and impending storm from the Atlantic, with the Jet stream explanation.

www.bbc.co.uk...=_

Typical hype from the Express, so won't put much stock in it. Yes, the weather is a bit crappy but overall, it's not that bad. It is Winter, afterall...

I'm also puzzled by the rage directed at the "Government", as if they can stop the rain falling! It is ironic that those doing the moaning are the one's who decided to live on flood plains.

The Somerset Levels are a flood basin and, before being cleared for farmland and housing, it was a large wetland. Back in the Roman period, the people who lived there did so on man made islands and stilted housing - even then they only occupied the sites in the Summer, moving uphill in Winter.

leylandthinker
The government helped out the people who are suffering in syria which is great but i think they gave too much and now they cant even help out there own people. There are thousands of people in the south of england who have been enduring rain,floods and prince charles visiting the south which i think is pointless. How is a roysl visiting going to stop this mess. The government need to but there thinking caps on and help these poor people of the south

Charles visited because he has a vested interest in the area, has an affinity with Country folk and has also donated £50,000 to assist in the cleanup.

I was going to be flippant and ask if anyone is building an ark yet, but with the amount of rain and wind, I hope everyone stays safe and have stocked up on food and water, candles, and some form of safe heating.

I was just listenign to a woman on the BBC from Moorland, Somerset, who was having a good moan about the Government's response there. When pressed as to what they should have done, she said

"We told them weeks ago something had to be done about all the water and we knew it would get bad, but they didn't get rid of it!"..

Pray tell, how exactly are they supposed to just "get rid of it" - it has to go somewhere! Some people seem to think the Government is able to do wondrous things, almost miraculous even.. Ironically, these will be the same people who claim the Government is incompetent and hasn't got a clue... Which is it?

The sad thing is, most flood defences are built to protect towns and cities, not rural farmland or villages. It is a simple matter of physics and economics.

Physics in that the water has to go somewhere and simply building big walls around every town just means the water is shunted of somewhere else.

Economics because it would cost billions and billions every year to build and maintain such defences for every residential area in the UK, many of which will only see flooding like this once in a lifetime. In the grand scheme of things, 12 inches of water every few decades simply is not worth the outlay and flood defences, as stated above, only shunt the water off down/upstream to someone else.

Better land management by farmers would be a good start - they are the ones who have ripped up all the trees for grazing and arable farming. They have a responsibility to manage the land, probably more so than anyone else. For it's part, the Government is looking into paying hill farmers money to grow trees once more to try and manage water flow.

reply to post by theabsolutetruth



I have been keeping up with unfolding events with regard to the weather, since the first of the significant weather fronts hit the west coast. I have had a weather eye (did you see what I did there) on such matters since the big storm in October, which bought damaging winds to even our relatively protected South East corner of the British Isles.

Since then, I have noticed repeated storms in the weather reports, coming in on near identical tracks, and pounding the same locations with high winds, incredible amounts of rain, and so on and so forth. This has caused plenty of damage, most of it being flood related. Now, there are those who would point out that the flooded areas are uniformly in river basins, flood plains, as they are also called. That is a fair point, until you realise that many of the flooded locations were isolated from flooding of this magnitude, by careful work which re-directed the flow of rivers and streams, in order to protect certain areas from flooding. An example would be the farmlands and communities in Somerset, which have seen their FOURTH, nearly FIFTH week of flooding.

So, in actual fact, because of river management techniques which were, up until relatively recently, being implemented to protect these areas, they were NOT flood prone, despite being in geographical locations which might lend themselves to that scenario, but for the alterations which had been made by the hand of man, to the way water was distributed, drained, and directed in those regions. That work has recently been undone, by mismanagement of the system of works which had previously protected the communities and farmlands worst affected by the recent downpours. Dredging works have been halted, purely because of budgetary restrictions placed in the Environment Agency by the Con-Lib government, during their cuts process (another issue entirely I think).

River banks have not been shored up, rivers have not been dredged, and infrastructure for when those flood defenses failed was not in place soon enough or in enough force to actually protect the communities and farms which are currently underwater. People living in these areas, who have done so for a considerable time, and some of whom have been involved in efforts to shore up flood defense in decades past, have watched their hard work be left to ruin over recent years, and this nonsense is the result of it.

To cap it all, I heard on the news that some government figure said that "hard choices will need to be made, between saving the community, and saving the farmland, because there is not the funding to do both". I'm sorry, I thought I just heard a politician tell a rural community, that either they flood out, or the farm does, purely because of money. This I have a massive problem with. Why don't the government merely say to the nation "From now, until the end of this crisis, all material resources required to protect at risk areas, drain currently flooded residential and farmland areas, and put right any failings in watercourse management, will be provided without charge. That is to say, that if the materials and human resources exist in the UK, then they will be bought here immediately, and until the end of the crisis, there will be no mention nor thought of monetary concerns until it is decent and fair to do so, i.e. not while peoples lives, livelihoods, and homes, hang in the balance."

In short what I am suggesting is that the government ought to commandeer all necessary material in order to make this happen. I am not saying they should pay for it, I am saying that no payment should be made for these things, WHAT SO DAMNED EVER! I am saying, that the time to worry about how much things cost, is not when we are loosing crops and cattle by the farmload from our food producing regions, which will inevitably force import costs UP, because of the demand for foreign importing to cover the losses we are suffering. I am saying that the time to worry about cost, is not when peoples homes, for which they have worked very hard, are many feet under water, and they are living in cramped up conditions in emergency circumstances. What I am saying, is that it is about time someone declared a state of emergency, and pulled in the resources necessary to combat further flooding, drain these areas dry, and rectify the parlous state of watercourse management in the effected regions.

That concerns of cost are even being CONSIDERED at a time like this, when so much hangs in the balance, is frankly appalling, and I am ashamed to be living in a nation whose government would be so callous, and so stupid. Many of these flood hit zones are producing the nations food for crying out loud! Milk, eggs, corn, wheat, beef, lamb.... even in the most selfish way, how can our government continue to ignore the value of what they are leaving to ruin? I find all this utterly unacceptable. Its high time the government got their fingers out, got the job done, and worried about the bill afterwards. I highly doubt it would cost nearly as much to sort this mess out, as we have spent on charity for hurricane hit places across the globe in the last five years. While I believe that the sort of disaster relief money that we send abroad is money well spent, for a cause most worthy, it would be idiotic to be so charitable, without being able to look after our own interests in a similarly staunch manner.

Glorious bright sunshine here in Kingston Upon Hull. ?

Not even a slight breeze.

Crazy eh!

reply to post by jehova620


Same here, it's lovely, sunshine at last!

reply to post by TrueBrit


It is worth pointing out that no dredging has taken place on the Somerset levels for nigh on 20 years, so it's very short sighted and very politically motivated to blame the current Government.

It is also worth noting that the Farmers themselves have a responsibility to manage their land, including making sure drainage ditches etc are clear. It has been noted that while dredging may have alleviated some of the flooding, it isn't a magic bullet and a whole raft of measures need to be employed, not all of which fall under the remit of the EA but instead fall on the locals themselves managing the land on which they live and work.

reply to post by TrueBrit


As for resources for the crisis itself, rather than finger pointing which ultimately is quite pointless, they do appear to be throwing huge amounts of resources at this problem - extra pumps being brought in, the Military being deployed etc. Even in countries where this is normal, I think the response has been comparably rather good.

At the end of the day, people love the blame the Government, but dredging or not, we have had exceptional amounts of rainfall which would have led to flooding anyway and along the coast, the sheer force of the surges and waves would have overwhelmed anything but the sturdiest of defences.

This sort of thing will happen from time to time and people should just accept it when they live in low-lying, flood prone area's. These very same arguments and accusations spring up every time there is flooding, no matter the Government in place and no matter what the EA does. Anyone remember 2007 - the SW got hit hard by flooding then around Gloucester, but the sheer volume of water dumped on the region would have ensured it flooded, no matter what.

Another problem with flood defences is the displaced water must go somewhere - many times shoring up defences for one village will ensure another who previously had no problem suddenly has one. The problem is not something that can simply be solved.

For a bit of perspective for those fellow members who live overseas and who (rightly) point out that a couple of mm of rain isn't that much. You are right, it isn't much. The problem is that this has been non stop for months now. The South East has experienced its wettest winter in over 250 years of recorded meteorology.

A couple of mm when it has been non stop for that long may as well be another foot, the damage is already done. Best wishes to those affected.

reply to post by Flavian


Exactly, something even those in the UK can do well to remember...

The wettest winter for 250 years, but they want to blame the Government....

Most defences are built with a view of being able to prevent a 1/100 year flood and even then, the water still has to go somewhere so it usually ends up being dumped on farmland, which is what most of the levels are...

Think of it this way - had every village in the Levels been protected, where would that water have gone? Lets take Moorland, the latest village to be submerged... Had it walled itself off and sent the water downstream, that surely would then have flooded Bridgewater - a much bigger town?

reply to post by stumason


There is no doubt that dredging would help, as would upland woodland being restored but it still wouldn't have prevented this deluge. And you are right Stu, the simple fact is that with flood protection the rural areas are sacrificed for the larger urban areas, mainly because there is more free land to "allow" to flood.

I did love the news the other night with a couple of residents in Cornwall moaning about the government not doing enough. What do they expect? Cameron to walk into the sea and say "who's being a very naughty weather then? Go away!"

reply to post by Flavian


Quite, I'm not saying it wouldn't have helped either, but when an exceptional event happens, you can't rely on things designed to prevent "normal events" to work very well.

Most years, the levels don't flood, but then most years we don't see a years worth of rainfall in a month

EDIT: On the plus side, all the nations reservoirs and aquifers have refilled , meaning we should be drought free for a couple of years no matter what the Summer brings.

The problem is that we're never going to get a joined-up approach in this benighted country. Planning permission is a joke these days. How many times have we all seen people building new developments on flood plains? Look at the Thames Gateway plan from a few years ago. Total madness.

Fear not! Following Charles' visit to the area, Dave has brushed aside Owen Peterson and has taken charge of operation COBRA, the army has been called in to advise on civil engineering and land management and a whopping £100m has been allocated to the clean up!

reply to post by stumason


The main criticism of the government, has to come from the fact that emergency measures of a comprehensive and all hands to the pumps nature, has only recently come into force. The military only turned up in the last few days, and the situation has been serious for weeks. Real emergency measures should have been in force from a maximum of twenty four hours from the beginning of the flooding, until whenever it ends. The manpower simply was not there, and that is not right. Even if the dredging issue would not have been a silver bullet, it should have been done, and so should enforcement of the rules regarding individuals responsibility toward their land.

There have been failings in speed, enforcement, and government responsibility, and that is not acceptable.

Bone dry up here...I hope England Dissolves.

reply to post by TrueBrit


Agreed, I'm not saying the Government response was perfect, but then, when is it ever? What irks me though is the responses from some of the residents affected. While I feel their pain and would hate to be in their position, some of the things they've been blurting out have been ridiculous:

Farmer Jenny Winslade said she and her family had been forced to leave their home and move 550 cattle off their farm.

"The water is rising at an unbelievably fast rate," she said. "The EA (Environment Agency) have completely lost control of the situation and it's a disaster zone out there."

Lost control? There is no control when you're talking about millions upon millions of gallons of water, with more falling out the sky every day! It has to go somewhere.. What is she expecting? She summed it up herself - the water is rising at an "unbelievably fast rate"

And this one made me laugh at the contradiction that went totally unnoticed:

Jan MacEacharn is one of the residents who has decided to stay. She said the water had not yet entered her home.

She told BBC Breakfast that she could not leave because she had a horse, cats and a dog that she did not want to leave behind.

"Everybody in this village is in absolute devastation," she said. "There's not a single person in this village that has got their home left."

If the water has not entered here home, then surely their second part of her statement is just hyperbole?

I think people should be more realistic about the situation, that is all. Yes, there is a certain amount of blame to be apportioned with regards to land management (both from the EA and the Farmers) but at the same time, Human's cannot control nature.

EDIT:

Soloprotocol
Bone dry up here...I hope England Dissolves.

Ah, Solo..... One day, we might get more than a single line of poorly thought out wit... One day...