By Paul Homewood
https://twitter.com/metoffice/status/1228925466100236289/photo/1
As expected, it has been South Wales which has taken the brunt of the rain from Storm Dennis, with a very rare red warning being issued there by the Met Office yesterday.
The top 48-hour rainfall totals were all in the area of Glamorgan and the Brecon Beacons:
https://twitter.com/i/status/1229042751620050944
As seems almost inevitable now whenever there is a flood, the media tell us we have had a month’s worth of rainfall in a day, as if this is unprecedented. In fact two or three inches in a day is a common event somewhere in Britain every year.
There are certain areas of Britain which are highly vulnerable to flooding, and South Wales unfortunately is one, thanks to the topography so close to the Brecon Beacons. The region has a history of bad floods. One in particular stands out, December 1960, when this rather poignant home movie was shot by an amateur cameraman.
The first 4 minutes are a bit boring, but it is worth watching the rest. I was particularly fascinated at the bit near the end, when a couple of locals put their lives at risk trying to repair a bridge!
The Met Office report for that month can be directly compared with Storm Dennis:
https://digital.nmla.metoffice.gov.uk/SO_7498a04d-6a40-4207-a27f-772663ffd2fc/
Note that both storms were centred near Iceland.
Whereas Dennis put down about 6 inches of rain in 48 hours, the 1960 storm dropped 7 inches over three days, with up to 5.5 inches in a 20-hour period in the Rhondda.
People argue that these sort of storms are more common nowadays, but is there any evidence for these, other than subjective impression?
Just two years before the 1960 floods, Wales was hit by another storm, almost as bad, with more than 3 inches of rain in a day in places, leading to widespread flooding:
https://digital.nmla.metoffice.gov.uk/SO_7498a04d-6a40-4207-a27f-772663ffd2fc/
The British Rainfall publication for 1958 confirms the widespread nature of these measurements, and their presence at low level sites, rather than just up in the Brecons.
https://digital.nmla.metoffice.gov.uk/IO_7695e7a9-6dbf-43c7-b65c-53d0c293088f/
A trawl of the archives would doubtlessly uncover many more such examples, such as Nov 1929, when 211mm fell on Maerdy in a single day, leading to disastrous floods:
https://digital.nmla.metoffice.gov.uk/IO_c23092fb-5e1f-47e6-9030-36578b5c1289/
Storms and floods such as these are unfortunately natural reoccurring events. It is saddening that climate scientists, politicians and the media now want to make political capital out of them.
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February 17, 2020 at 01:01PM
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