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storm and floods in GB - is everyone ok?

we had the opposite problem in 1999/2000 when a terrible draught followed a flood year. I saw a wonderful cartoon back then: Chancellor standing on a stage in a dry riverbed, proudely claiming: "my government's flood preventing policy works perfectly!"

The last 3 years have been extraordinarily dry in Bavaria. We've only had some 25 or 30 rainy days this year in my district (drizzle included). And about 20 thunderstorms and 6 hailstorms.
Paradoxely, draughts can cause floods, too: extremely dry soil is unable to suck the water up. It runs off the surface as if it were glazed.
 
I live halfway up a steep hill so once I was in danger from floods we'd be collecting two of every animal. However, my drive to work has been... soggy the last week, and I spent all Monday night helping a friend sweep water out of his living room in Congressbury.

What a crap winter.
 
I'm in Exeter, and the River Exe was scarily high a few days ago. The city was last flooded badly in 1960, after which the current flood defences were built. They work well for my part of the city, but on either side of the defences there was bad flooding. Both main line train lines out of Exeter towards London were closed, the Waterloo line due to a landslip near Yeovil, and the Bristol-Paddington line because of severe flooding just outside the main station. The flood water had receded now, but the damage to the track bed will still take several days to fix.

It worries me that flooding this bad has happened so early in the season. Thankfully the next few days should stay dry, but the ground may remain sodden for much longer, so any further heavy rain may be disastrous.
 
Well it's starting to freeze in this neck of the country, had to scrape some ice of my car before I could leave work.
 
Fortunately we live pretty high up and the most that's happened is a couple of hour long powercuts (which have stopped). I really feel for anyone who's been flooded, it must be awful. :(

I hate the rain, so I probably live in the wrong country, but at least it was sunny & dry today.

I've never been to your area (but would love to!) but judging by the maps there are many hills around, some of which look quite steep. Do you get landslides or is the soil solid enough to stay in place?
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There have been one or two small ones near where I live but it's only a bit mud/stone etc on the side of the road, nothing serious that I've seen.
 
Well the UK basically has these season

A Warmish and Wet Season (spring)
A Warm and Wet Season (Summer)
A Cool and Wet Season (Autumn)
A Cold and Wet Season (Winter)
 
Just expect rain or worse in the UK and all you can be is pleasntly suprised if the weather turns out nice.
 
MacLeod said:
Well the UK basically has these season

A Warmish and Wet Season (spring)
A Warm and Wet Season (Summer)
A Cool and Wet Season (Autumn)
A Cold and Wet Season (Winter)
Click to expand...
You live in the wrong part of GB, apparently. I've been to Britain pretty often over the last 15 years and it rained only once. For a week, though.

Your rain arrived in Bavaria this morning. Just in time for me to get soaked on my way to work LOL. Atm it's snowing and the forecast predicts more snow and frost for the weekend. The river has already risen quite impressively, but I don't expect major flooding.

My appartment is in a pentouse on top of a shopping mall, so I am quite safe anyway and the only danger is that I might raid the sweets store that's right under my terrace :D
 
Britain isn't always this wet, and I still think we have a pretty good climate for the most part, we don't get the extremes a lot of countries do.
 
True Britain doesn't suffer the extremes of hot and old that some countries do. But it does have a rather changeable climate, and as in general extreme weather is rare it makes it hard to plan for. Which is why sometimes in heavy snow the country creaks to almost a halt. After all is it worth spending millions to plan for a once in ten year event?
 
^There's been at least 3 or 4 times with countrywide heavy snow in the last 4 years though. It's becoming more common, of the top of my head, last winter was the first that we had none since 2008 and that's here in the Southwest. In the north obviously it's much more common.
 
This is the trouble, places like Norway and Sweden get the same every winter, and have been used to dealing with it for decades, we don't so we get caught on the hop. And yeah last year was quite mild by comparison to the few that went before it, though we did get some snow. I can still remember not so long ago us going through a period of many years practically snow free for the most part, but I remember as a child it always seeming to snow, so these things come and go.

Which makes a bugger planning for it because too many mild winters in a row and suddenly councils are wasting money. They cut back and we then get a bad winter and suddenly it's "Why weren't you ready?"
 
^Agreed, another issue is their are quite a few idiots out there that don't adapt their driving to suit the snowy/icey conditons.
 
I loathe driving in snow, and I've crawled along at 10-15 mph (in a 60 zone) which was the limit any faster and you could feel the car losing traction.
 
JayOwl said:
^There's been at least 3 or 4 times with countrywide heavy snow in the last 4 years though. It's becoming more common, of the top of my head, last winter was the first that we had none since 2008 and that's here in the Southwest. In the north obviously it's much more common.
Click to expand...

The problem is that some parts are more affected by others, in the area where I live, yes we've had a little bit of snow, but no where near as bad as some parts of the country. Some winters you are listening to the news about heavy snow yet outside there isn't even a flake of the white stuff.

So how do you allocate resources? Do you focus them on certain areas? And how do you justify it to the taxpayers that you are only allocating resources to certain areas and not the whole country?
 
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