Sky Blame Babet Floods On Climate Change

By Paul Homewood

h/t Ian Magness

From Sky’s “We Never Had Floods Before” Department:

Babet has been an exceptional storm, bringing torrential rain to Britain’s dry side.

Eastern areas are sheltered from storms that normally barrel in from the Atlantic at this time of year.

But Babet has come from a more southerly direction, channelled by an unusual position of the jet stream, and the east has been lashed with rain.

Met Office figures show between Thursday and Saturday morning, 79mm fell in Charsfield, Suffolk. That’s a little over three inches in two days.

The rain was even heavier further north.

So why did Babet bring so much rain?

It has a lot to do with the unusually warm seas it crossed as it tracked up from Portugal and the Bay of Biscay to the UK.

It meant more water evaporated into the atmosphere. And because the air is relatively warm too, all that moisture got transported with the storm system to fall as rain over Britain.

It’s exactly what scientists predict from climate change, particularly over winter.

The UK will have to prepare for more floods, even in areas that are normally much drier.

https://news.sky.com/story/why-storm-babet-brought-so-much-rain-and-why-were-likely-to-see-more-storms-like-it-12989128

But just how exceptional was the rain?

According to the Met Office, the wettest place in the UK on Friday was Sheffield, which had 84mm of rain, 3.3 inches:

The record daily rainfall there stands at 119.2mm, set in July 1973. Extreme rainfall hit much of Britain on several days that month, as the Met Office reported at the time:

https://digital.nmla.metoffice.gov.uk/IO_f1a640eb-7f0b-4062-8370-da6c03979a69/

Clearly there is nothing at unusual about 3 inches of rain falling in a day, even in the supposedly dry side of the country, as a glance back at the weather of a hundred years ago shows:

https://digital.nmla.metoffice.gov.uk/IO_ed88fd44-4fc1-4ead-a4be-5dd520067710/

Note the comment that only falls of over 4 inches are regarded as noteworthy, and that in 1917 there had been 68 instances, with 1923 being seen as low.

Note as well the storm at Carrbridge, which lies in the Northeast of Scotland, near to the areas affected by Babet.

And as KNMI shows, Babet’s rainfall in NE Scotland was not exceptional by historical standards, nor is there any trend to more intense daily rainfalls in the region: