Weather Talk

Once again, Cumbria has been worst hit by floods caused by some the heaviest rains the country has seen; cleanup has been slowed down by further rains and strong winds; the bad news is that further very strong winds and rains are coming in from the Atlantic, which will slow up the clearing up process further. Places such as Cockermouth have been almost cut-off by the floods and questions are now being asked as to why the flood defences did not work?

Land in the UK is being swallowed up by development in one form or another and it has been inevitable that floodplains have not been left out of this development; as villages, towns and cities have developed along rivers, floods will happen. A floodplain is nature’s way of allowing a river to overflow and to flood naturally and when you add buildings on top of a floodplain, these developments run a great risk of seeing devastating floods; human naivety is at play here in a very big way. People claim that climate change is responsible for the floods, when in reality city / town planners and governments are using the term climate change as a scapegoat, they are missing the point that buildings are being built on natural floodplains.

Other issues are concerning too, the ground acts as a great sponge when heavy rains occur, however many people have cars these days and they want to be able to park their car in a driveway, many of these are concrete or other solid substance that water cannot get through and into the ground. The drains take more water from this runoff and more and more water ends up in our rivers rather than being soaked up into the ground; the rivers get overfilled and flood onto developed floodplains. The more we concrete over things the more volume of water entering our drains and rivers, which simply cannot cope.

It is not blood mad, it is floody mad!!!

Original Article