September Rain Pain Continues

11th September, 2008

The Met Office is predicting that further heavy rain will affect parts of UK during the coming week, falling on already saturated ground and increasing the potential for further problems following the weekend's events.

A combined Environment Agency (EA) and Met Office team based in the Met Office's Operations Centre will continue to monitor the situation to deliver rainfall warnings to emergency responders as necessary.

After a mainly dry day for many today, rain will move in from the west during Tuesday and into Wednesday. Western areas are likely to see the highest totals with between 20 mm and 30 mm.

The changeable theme to the weather looks set to continue through the week with some drier brighter conditions but also further spells of rain. Heavy rain has already led to disruption especially across parts of north-east England and south Wales.

The Met Office and EA are working closely together and thanks to the recent deployment of enhanced forecast models are able to give greater warning of severe weather and the risk of flooding to land and properties.

AUGUST AWFILIUS

The Queen might have had an Annus Horibilius a few years back but this August looks set to be one of the wettest gloomiest ever. I've crowned it AUGUST AWFILIUS! So it is no wonder bookings for Winter Sun are up 150%! At the start of the summer the media was going crazy for stories about camping here in the UK and must have enticed many who must have been yearning for the smell of suncream and sand between the toes as they watched their campsites be invaded by frogs and ducks. Gardener's lawns have never been so green on the up side, but on the down side it hasn't exactly been the weather to sit relaxing with a glass of wine while smelling the roses has it?!

MORPETH

The weather has severely damaged harvests of wheat in parts of the country as the Combines can't get into the muddy fields to harvest the crops and yet again another market town experienced a biblical flood, this time the unlucky place was Morpeth in Northumberland, just up the road from GandG HQ. The last time it suffered such a terrible flood was in the 60's. The whole town centre was turned into a mini Venice for a day and of course the worst part being the muddy damp horror it left in its wake, which will take many householders and small businesses a long time to sort out.

When reading about floods, building on flood plains is often mentioned, however in Morpeth's case a lot of new development has taken place higher up, as the town centre is the lowest point. What I am left wondering is how much has all this new development increased the chance of flooding at lower levels? Using my limited knowledge from a Geography A'Level and degree in Env Mgt of how rivers etc work I assume that thirty years ago all those farmfields higher up would have held the water and over a period through the watercourse it would have flowed into the River Wansbeck.

Now those fields are housing estates, and a similar level of rainfall will run off much quicker from the tarmaced roads down the hills and also into storm drains bursting into the river below at a much faster rate and overwhelming the system resulting in bigger, faster flooding? Well, this is just a theory and it could be wrong, but I think it doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out the more development the greater the chance it will affect water course systems and how much is this taken into account in planning decisions? As new homes are even built on flood plains that years ago would NEVER have been built on it seems not much.

Does anyone know any good sun dances?

Information on the latest flooding situation can be found on the Environment Agency website.