By Paul Homewood
The situation at the Toddbrook Reservoir above Whaley Bridge is still highly dangerous, although fire crews have begun to drain the dam.
The dam wall was damaged when heavy rainfalls led to water overtopping the wall.
Inevitably though, creeps are already coming out of the woodwork to blame climate change, but there is no evidence that the rainfall was unusually extreme.
According to Huff Post, parts of the North West had seen 40mm to 50mm of rain in about 24 hours, with 52.2mm recorded between 11am on Saturday and 11am on Sunday at Greenfield near Oldham.
This has, of course, been widely labelled as half a month’s rain, as if this was somehow a biblical event. But 2 inches of rain in a day is not an unusual event, particularly over the Pennines, which naturally attracts greater rainfall.
The figures tally with the Environment Agency’s totals for the week:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/weekly-rainfall-and-river-flow-reports-for-england
Far larger rainfall amounts have occurred in the past over much shorter periods of time, and all many years in the past:
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/maps-and-data/uk-climate-extremes
Flash floods have been ever present in Pennine valleys. Holmfirth, just a couple of hills north of Whaley Bridge and on the Yorkshire side, suffered a catastrophic breach of the Bilberry Dam in 1852, causing 81 deaths.
And just days before D Day, another cloudburst caused more deadly flooding, though that time the dam helped to stem the worst.
Below is the relevant page from British Rainfall for that year. The Holmfirth flood happened on May 29th, and you can see the rainfall amounts on that day at Hayfield (which is very close to Whaley Bridge) and Woodhead, a few miles to the south of Holmfirth.
At Hayfield, 2.55 inches fell in 73 minutes!
https://digital.nmla.metoffice.gov.uk/digitalFile_5e174081-a18a-4de5-8b6d-02052300239b/
It is worth noting that those storms occurred on the same day that 91F in London.
According to the Telegraph:
Professor Roderick Smith, from Imperial College London, said: "Extreme weather events mean that there is increasing unease about the safety of older dams: particularly the need to release excess water safely and easily."
The reservoir was damaged due to flooding in 1964, according to the Environment Agency, but another specialist said it was "unlikely" it had been in an unsafe condition before the heavy rainfall on Thursday.
Professor Tim Broyd, Professor of Built Environment Foresight at University College London, said: "Dams are highly regulated structures, which includes regular structural inspections by highly qualified engineers.
"It is unlikely therefore that the dam was in a previously unsafe condition.
"What may have been the cause, however, is that the flow rate into the reservoir was exceptionally high, as a result of extreme local rainflows."
This really is quite disgraceful. All of our dams should be able to withstand the amounts of rainfall that fell this week, and indeed much, much more. Any civil engineering infrastructure should be designed and maintained to cope with not only foreseeable events, but also the worst possibly imaginable.
If supposed experts are suggesting that there was nothing wrong with a dam, which is falling to pieces after a perfectly normal weather event, they should not be doing the job they are in. Such complacency should not be tolerated where people’s lives are at stake.
And the first one to go should be this cretin, who incredibly is in charge of the Environment Agency:
https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/environment-agency
via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
August 3, 2019 at 05:03AM
Iowa Climate Science Education 
Reblogged this on Climate- Science.
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