The Flooding

The first really practical move to alleviate the floods, on the Somerset levels at least, is the arrival there today of some serious pumping equipment from Holland.

It's all a bit too flat down there. When Todmorden has flooded, there was no proper clean up of the sewage laden waters, just waited for more rain to wash it away.

Looks pretty grim down south now, and will be for a while. A lot of twaddle being talked by politicians. Ordinary workers and volunteers doing a good job, but management is pie in the sky. A bit like they said about the Somme, lions led by donkeys.

The key now to draining the Somerset levels is getting a huge amount of water past the 'tidelock' into the sea. The Dutch team should manage that within a week. How come the UK has no such heavy duty wide bore pumping equipment available?

Not understanding the Somerset levels system was bad enough, delay on dealing with the predictable Thames valley flood seems symbolic of the shambolic.

cyfrifia wrote: How come the UK has no such heavy duty wide bore pumping equipment available?

There you go again cyfrifia. What is your problem tonight? Don't you remember the total lack of snow ploughs available to the councils and railways at the last heavy snowstorms. Because we scrapped them all as it was never going to snow heavily again. Quite logical for gormless people.      

cyfrifia wrote:
The first really practical move to alleviate the floods, on the Somerset levels at least, is the arrival there today of some serious pumping equipment from Holland.

About time.

Feel so sorry for all the residents.  Just seems to be getting worse and worse.

Farming families in flood areas have reason to live there, but many houses flooding now are suburban. Must be a nightmare with knee deep water in and surrounding the house, roads closed, difficulty getting food, medicine and reliably safe drinking water, fierce wind chill, electricity cut off, toilets spewing sewage, lack of information.

When the flood eventually dries up, a battle to get insurance payment, clearing ruined carpet, furniture, etc. Then the plaster needs removing, the house pressure washing and drying out. For some it has gone on literally for years before they can return. Only a small percentage of population will be so badly effected, but yes, for those who are, it must be a real disaster.

British climate is balanced between the atlantic jetstream and gulf stream, weather patterns and winds coming from different directions, won't take much shift in global weather patterns to get more flooding.

All over the world people live in flood areas, on the slopes of volcanoes, where tsunamis hit, and on earthquake fault lines. Britain had a couple of tsunamis back in history.

One in the Bristol Channel, 1607, probably drowned the Somerset levels.

There appeaers to be a 'worm' running across your post cyfrifia. It's very persistant and giving me 'menieres'.
Any possibility you might catch it and put in back on the lawn.  

Reference tsunamis etc. Correct. Will happen again sometime. Man is but a fly  on a horses rump. Surprise., surprise. Meanwhile we survive as best we can. Fight where you can win the battle and retreat where you cannot. Logical really.

There you are Atlas, worm returned to the lawn. Historical tsunamis and floods are of interest in how the British Isles were formed, how the geology combined with weather has and will effect events of the next weeks.
The ground has absorbed so much water now, there is groundwater flooding as well as river flooding. A severe cold snap now would be problematic, so hope that doesn't happen. Groundwater type flooding is problematic for railways, and in a few other ways.
Time and tide, and associated forces of nature are certainly making themselves known at the moment.

Some down south complain they ring the local council for help, sandbags etc, and are told to contact the environment agency, who say, ring your local council. That sort of thing, the usual.

Predictable, widespread, ongoing unpleasant problems for a period of time, could mean a lot of people doing a lot of complaining, making it look bad for the competence of central government.

This could create a political motive for central government taking an interest in the competence of local government.

The two usually exist in different, disconnected and disinterested parallel universes.

David Cameron has told councils in flood-hit areas not to charge for sandbags.

Ed Miliband said: Families shouldn't have to pay for sandbags but the government seems in utter chaos and confusion about this issue.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-26176976

Central government doesn't seem in confusion about sandbags, but local government is entirely different. A complicated political relationship, each, often conveniently, blaming the other.

Would both local and central government work better if they were more connected, or, would that risk destroying the very foundations of something or other?

Under advice from the Environment Agency, the government has sent in the troops to shift sandbags. People with practical experience of dealing with floods are not so keen on sandbags, they are slow and heavy, difficult to move, as well as letting water through, sandbags become contaminated waste once soaked with filthy floodwaters full of bacteria, creating disposal problems. Other, more practical types of barrier are now being used. it would have been handy if the Environment Agency had found out more about the practicalities of dealing with flooding beforehand, and been able to give informed advice, but . . .

It would have also been handy if they had known that it was going to rain more than it has for 250 years, but we can all be wise after the event, I guess.

We might have expected the E.A. with access to massive, detailed global weather data, and the know-how to interpret it, to have a fair idea that, following the diversion of the polar jetstream and consequent extreme weather in the USA, the UK was likely to get similar extreme weather. Yes, it's ok being wise after the event, but the E.A. really should have been wise to the probability at least a few days before the event, and had a better response plan ready.

Perhaps we have become so accustomed to the different 'agencies' not doing much of a job, we don't really expect that much.

Or perhaps the opposite. We live such protected lives that we can't accept that someone isn't to blame.
Of course the government cuts, and an environment secretary who doesn't accept climate change will have played a part, but sometimes things just happen.

Interesting point about "protected lives". As inhabitants of one of the most developed nations in the world, we do have a legacy of health care, good food, high standard of living and, on average 'protected lives'. People have different views on this, many complain of a nanny state, lack of social mobility, lack of opportunity for young people, uselessness of voting, lack of any say in how the country is run, too much apathy around. Are we 'protected' in the way battery hens are protected? Nice and safe and well fed, but having lost a basic sense of freedom?

Pointing out that it is surprising that with all the weather satellites, ocean temperature monitoring, and general mass of high-tech planet-wide weather data, plus statistical analysis of the pattern of flood events and other extreme weather events in the UK and around the world in recent years, the E.A. did not have clue that huge gales and high spring tides would very probably combine as they have done, is not necessarily to blame anyone, but it might be right to.

Yes, sometimes things just happen, but through it's history, the people of the British Isles have had to use their wits to survive. That sense of intelligent inquiry into how things work led to this little group of swampy and rocky islands ever becoming anything much. Have we lost that, do we just shrug the shoulders and say 'things just happen'?

No cyfrifia, but we don't have to reach for the keyboard, telephone or writing material to play the nonsense 'blame game' every single time something some paltry or other displeasure happens either.
We have had far worse minor disasters even in my short time on this planet than that which upsets us now, even I might say to a far, far greater extent. ..    

Yes, did read some of Charles Dickens books many years ago. Unforgettable stuff.

The number of weather observation satellites in various orbits, with a wide range of measuring instruments is massive.
http://www.ceos.org/
Commercial and government interpretation and use of weather data is well established. Despite all that, we are still taken by surprise by a series of gales coming in across the Atlantic. Is weather by it's nature unpredictable, or are weather patterns in process of becoming too chaotic to understand?
http://cefasmapping.defra.gov.uk/Map

There have been campaigns about deforestation and destruction of the natural world since the 1960s. People may be aware of the irreversible damage, but still it continues as fast as ever. We get a lot of "taps on the shoulder", but there are also all the wars to contend with.
Rising world population continues to put pressure on the environment, and that effects the weather (apparently). Britain was deforested in the Bronze age, and we have yet to do much to remedy that. Natural forest might do a lot to protect against extreme weather.

The weight of immigrants is difficult to calculate due to iffy statistics. Migrationwatch says "Nearly 4 million immigrants have arrived since 1997."
http://www.migrationwatchuk.co.uk/

If we calculate the average weight of a person as 62 kilograms, that's 4,000,000 x 62 = 248,000,000 kg = 248,000 metric tonnes of immigrants.

Total weight of immigrants is probably nothing compared to the total weight of water that has fallen on the UK in the last few days.

As I understand it man's contribution to Co2's is less than 2%. Now it could be said that such was the straw that broke the camel's back - I would not argue or labour the point but neither am I convinced that the weather patterns would not have changed naturally either. When the Thames froze over in the 18th century a great many local people lost their livelihood for a number of months, so they found some other way of surviving. In other words they made the best of a bad job and got on with it. Do you see an alternative? Do you seriously think that 'anything' this or any other government can or could have done would have held back the waters. Reminds me of Moses - another fantasy tale. We live and we learn and we move on. If you want to drop our nuclear deterrent or stop troops going fighting foreign wars or stop International Aid or drop heavily on the banks and the tax avoiders then perhaps, just perhaps, there might be the wherewith-all to strengthen our coastal and waterway defenses so as to avoid a repartition of this last two months destruction - although it won't stop falling trees and buildings - and perhaps we could stop building on known flood plains whilst we are at it -doh!
But the blame-game needs to stop to allow cooler, more rational heads to do their work. Strange as it may seem. This 'is' something 'we are all in together'.

The UK experiences huge storms, floods and tidal surges quite regularly, but it seems they are soon forgotten. Science and technology didn't seem very helpful in predicting this recent flooding.

A better understanding of how to organise things to live with the weather might be arrived at by an inter-disciplinary approach, combining historical records with archeology, geology, hydrology, land management, structural engineering and the like.

There is a mass of relevant information available now, but does anyone put it together to arrive at a practical understanding?

Most of what we might think of as natural landscape in the UK is actually a man made landscape.

Sand is quite interesting. We dredge a huge amount of sand from a sandbank from somewhere out in the sea to the southwest of Cornwall. Is that a good idea? Left where it is it might absorb some of the energy of storm surges.

Ancient storms created huge sand dune systems at certain places along our coasts. They have mostly been destroyed by farming and development. Preserving them and encouraging them to form, rather than destroying them might be protective.

The UK has a surprising number of underground rivers that drain the land, a better understanding of them might help.

And so on, as you say Atlas, a cool and rational problem solving approach is called for, but being cool and rational should start with collecting together the relevant information.

Planting more natural forest, rather than having isolated clumps of trees might be one of the cheapest, easiest and most helpful things to do.

As well as forgetting our historical floods, we usually soon forget the victims of floods, being badly flooded out is often just the start of the problems it causes.

One thing that is never highlighted is that we build on flood planes - the clue is in the word FLOOD.   

So can we really complain when they get flooded?   

Also over the years we have straightened, culverted and otherwise diverted the natural flow of rivers, if you mess with nature there will be consequences. Nature has made the course of rivers that way for a reason; as has it grown forests of trees. Look what happened to the farming industry, remove hedges and make big fields, then surprise when the soil is washed away, so now they are replacing them - man 0 nature 1.  

There is some scientific interest at the moment in the development of self-healing materials, and similarly in self-organising systems.

As usual, nature has already sorted this out for itself. The self-healing and self-organising systems of nature are complicated to understand, but are there.

Diddling with river systems and changing natural landscapes does put a spanner in the works. We inevitably change natural systems with human activity, but a better understanding of how it works might mean it's done more intelligently.

It's been a commercially driven free for all up to now, with, as you say, keithatrochdale, ludicrous results like building houses on floodplains.