July Flooding in the UK

This time it's the turn of the area around the Severn, with towns such as Tewskesbury affected as I watch, and Gloucester just about getting away with it.

There is a wealth of You Tube and Flickr resources, as one would expect.

The BBC and all the usual news agencies have also been covering the floods, such as SKY NEWS - which has a useful video clip with an explanation as to why it's been so wet.

Lessons need to be learned, but the basic problem is that we've had unprecedented rainfall...

There is a problem with flooding now affecting water supplies and possibly the electricity supply. Although there has been a criticism of the flood defences, it's fairly obvious to geographers and anyone who thinks it through that the issue with flood defences are going to be built to a particular level which is both reasonable and affordable. If is technically possible to prevent flooding, but there is a history of people living on floodplains. Flooding events have a return period from 1 year to hundreds of years: the period of time within which one would normally expect an event to happen within. Any defence is built to withstand a return period which is thought to be a reasonable compromise time...

They're called floodplains for a reason ! I like this quote from an earlier BBC article:

Bob Spicer, professor of earth sciences at the Open University, said human activity was one of the causes of the floods. "One of the reasons why we've got this catastrophic flooding is that we've spent an awful lot of time building on floodplains." He said concreting floodplains "overwhelms the surface channels and the sewage systems and we get floods".

"Floodplains are called floodplains for a reason - they flood. That tends to be where we build, because it's easier."

There have been some suggestions that the existing defences are inadequate, or have perhaps not been maintained to the standards that they could have been.. I am sure that this allegation will be explored in the aftermath of the floods.

And as for the political angle, clearly successive governments have had the opportunity to put more funding in, but higher taxes are not popular - and who should pay ?

Also on BBC Gloucestershire site is a diary following a single mum as she recovers from the FLOODING in June.

Also came across an interesting site which mentions KING'S LYNN - the book is about the destruction of London by a flood. Anyone read it ?