Storm Desmond brings flooding and disruption to parts of UK says Auntie, and so it seems - the flood warning map is a sea of severe. Or you can have Storm Desmond: major incident declared as police urge people to evacuate home.
I don't usually do severe weather posts, but I thought I'd make an exception for this one.
My aunt lives not far away - probably happily for her, somewhat higher up in the hills. When we visit in the summer we go into Keswick, and look down into the river chuckling in its bed.
Now you get to look up at the river!
The glass panels of the flood defenses seem rather pointless in the summer, and indeed they are pointless in the summer. They worked for a while today, but have since been overtopped:
Found via wiki is this rather nice image:
While I'm on about my aunt, here for light relief is a picture taken in March 2008 near Torpenhow I think:
And so as not to leave on a low note, here's a much nicer one, looking South from Knott:
Or a song? It has a happy ending.
Update
The Beeb has a nice rainfall radar map, and says "With the average monthly rainfall in Cumbria being 146.1mm, Storm Desmond has brought more than two months worth of rain in 24 hours to the county." So, 300 mm in a day. That's close to the record. But not even close to the world records.
Refs
* Britain to think about strengthening flood defences if it rains again next year
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You always get more severe weather during Global Cooling, as you may know William. Not that you would agree with that publicly, as a paid warming alarmist.
[All of that is made-up -W]
How big is Rosetta Comet compared to Raleigh NC?
http://tinyurl.com/gu4vu9d
What would it smell like?
Here in eastern Washington state, where few live, we had hurricane force winds just over 2 weeks ago. This resulted in over 200,000 customers without electricity, some for up to 10 days.
Wind and rain records broken according to the Met Office. Hope your auntie's doing okay.
http://blog.metoffice.gov.uk/category/met-office-news/
Why do they hate moles up north?
[Pour discourager les autres? -W]
I'm glad it was September that we were running visiting up there. Ugh.
Since this sort of thing is likely to happen more often, what sorts of plausible adaptation strategies are there for those areas?
[Keswick has done that somewhat, with the barriers. They just weren't tall enough. Perhaps the river could be dredged? I'm not very familiar with the catchments -W]
They don't like stoatsweasels, either:
http://www0.f1online.de/preW/005848000/5848820.jpg
(GregH, mole holes can fatally disable horses, cattle and kings. And weasels can rip their flesh.)
Its wild, wet, and now also apparently without power: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/storm-desmond-power-cuts…
[That'll be why my aunt isn't answering her emails, I imagine -W]
Apparently George Monbiot is getting flack for suggesting that denuding hills of trees tends to cause flooding, and a solution would be to plant more trees on the hills in the area (also to re-wild the rivers, which I don't know much about)
Having more trees on the hills seems an obvious solution to me, but I don't know the area.
I'd suggest adding water turbines to the coastal wind farms up there, but the eagle ray conservationists would start writing hate letters to The Field.
Where's my other comment go? Here's the Monbiot article:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/13/flooding-public-sp…
[Monbiot may well get getting flack for tone, but its not totally clear that piece from 2014 applies to today's stuff. Keswick is not totally bare; but they are attached to the way the hills look now -W]
It's kind of insane to wreck your local ecosystem because you don't like how trees look. To get rid of the trees, so you get flooding as one result, then discuss man-made solutions like concrete barriers? That is nuts!
Don't screw up your ecosystem in the first place!
Monbiot is getting various interesting references on twitter:
https://twitter.com/GeorgeMonbiot/status/673763692387966976
Such as this one: http://www.carbonbrief.org/what-climate-change-attribution-can-tell-us-…
And this:
https://twitter.com/SteveOrmerod/status/673820546178617344
http://www.researchgate.net/publication/232815731_Freshwaters-_Openwate…
[... Perhaps the river could be dredged? I’m not very familiar with the catchments -W]
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/07/hide-evidence-stor…
According to the Environment Agency presentation given in this piece, dredging is probably not a good idea
[Hmm. If its from Env Ag maybe, if its from Monbiot I wouldn't trust it, he has a bee in his bonnet about that -W]
[Hmm. If its from Env Ag maybe, if its from Monbiot I wouldn’t trust it, he has a bee in his bonnet about that -W]
It's got the EA branding all over it - however "All copies of this presentation have now been deleted from the web (we republish it above)." Read into that what you will...