Under The Weather

Remember April, which was, so we are told, the hottest English April for at least 350 years, and considerable areas went up in flames?

Seems a long time ago now.

It’s just as well for Gordon Brown that most people in Britain these days aren’t particularly superstitious. If they were, they would probably feel that the bad weather now attending Brown’s accession to power is inauspicious, an ill omen, that presages evil in the land.

15th June

"Heavy flooding caused rush-hour chaos today. Huge downpours hit much of Britain overnight, particularly in the Birmingham area..."

16 June

"Thunderstorms and torrential rain caused chaos across a swathe of Britain yesterday, with widespread flooding disrupting road travel and rail services....

More than 40 workers were trapped by flood waters surrounding their tool factory in Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands, after a band of storms and showers crossed the region overnight and continued into the north of England...."

20th June

"Thousands of people have been left without electricity after severe weather hit parts of England and Wales. Direct lightning strikes and high winds cut power to around thousands of homes in east Kent, while torrential rain caused flooding of homes and roads..."

23rd June

"Flash floods wreak havoc..."

Now it’s more tornadoes in Telford and Burnham-on-Sea, and Floods force thousands from homes ( eyewitness accounts), with Sheffield particularly badly hit.

The Guardian reports that; “Only a fortnight ago the government's chief scientist warned that more funds were urgently needed to update the UK's Victorian-era drainage infrastructure.

…Engineers were today urgently trying to stop the Ulley reservoir in Yorkshire from bursting its banks due to record rainfall.

…The extreme weather will also be unnerving for officials tasked with delivering on Mr Brown's latest policy focus - building lots of new houses. Plans to build up to 200,000 new homes in the Thames Gateway have been questioned because much of the area has been classed as a flood plain in the past.”

The foolhardy replacement of benign porous and spongey vegetated surfaces with hard, impermeable surfaces due to excessive building nowadays is one major factor increasing the risk for flooding.

UPDATE: Hat-tip to Barkingside21 and Clairwil, who linked to Philip Booth’s very timely post on Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems. These would help to alleviate a lot of the flooding problems of development, if only planners would wake up and take action to make sure that SUDS are mandatory on new-build.

What always strikes me about sensible eco-solutions is that so many of them are ANCIENT and people in the past had so much more sense than people today. The housing with SUDS in Philip’s photos looks remarkably like traditional old-fashioned streets of vernacular housing all over the world, from Europe to Asia and beyond.

Again, it's back to the future ….