Monday, July 23, 2007
Floods in UK Midlands, West and South
A few weeks ago there were extensive floods in Sheffield, Hull and other areas in the north Midlands. Last Friday there was heavy rain over most of the south of England and it moved slowly over Hampshire into Gloucestershire, Warwickshire, Worcestershire and then Wales. The rain over Wales has now come down the Rivers Avon and Severn and completely flooded Evesham and Tewkesbury several feet deep and cut off roads into the Towns.
Oxford and Pangbourne had flash floods from rainfall last Friday which have gone down but now the River Thames is rising due to the volume of water coming from Gloucestershire and more flooding is expected. The Severn and Avon are expected to reach their peak early tomorrow morning and it is still raining.
Reports often say that the flooding is "unprecedented" but other reports say that the River Severn and Avon, which meet at Tewkesbury, had floods about as bad in 1947. Since then there has been increased building on flood plains and we now have climate change. This has made the jet stream move south from Iceland over the last few months and we have inclement weather due to low pressure volatile storms which have moved over the land very slowly while southern Europe has a heat wave and drought.
