Climate change
Midday 20 July and the sky was dark, rain tipping down. It may as well have been 5pm in October. One of the drains in the road became blocked and soon half of Knightsbridge was awash in a red river of mud, not that it prevented buses, lorries and taxis from charging through the water, much to the pedestrians' horror as their shorts were splattered with the spray. It was only the brand new Mercedes and the cyclists who proceeded with caution. Our sporting porter cleared the drain and two hours later the sun was shining, all was dry and nobody would have believed the earlier drama.
posted by Whispering Walls at 3:00 pm
5 Comments:
Glasgow has lovely weather - I spent yesterday having a barbecue overlooking Paddy's Milestone on the Ayshire coast - burnt faces all round
Ar eyou affected by flooding today? Take care.
Hi WL - fortunately that was my only flash flood experience although my aunt is shocked by the level of the Severn in Worcester and my friend in Gloucestershire's car has died after she drove it through a stream in the road.
We have friends who live in Painswick, overlooking the present ( and ancient) flood plain.They don't have a problem with flooding as they live on a hill, but they have decided to decamp up to us. They have no water ( not expected any back within 10/14 days)and the electricity keeps coming and going.
I have deep sympathy for all those affected, but I mostly blame the housebuilders over the last 50 years, who have done nothing to keep the water contained or even drained. Why do you think continental and American towns have huge drains & culverts all over the place? It's to take away flood water.
Er, we don't have any - and where the land might have helped drain it away we have newly laid concrete, just so it can accumulate.
king lear - hear ! hear ! - there is a reason they are called 'storm drains'. The politicians bleating on about 'a month's rain falling in a day/hour/minute' [delete according to required level of hyperbole required] is enough to drive one to despair.
It is not as though rain falls at an exactly average rate [of light drizzle?] throughout a month, and as you point out, infrastructure should be built to deal with some reasonably foreseeable storms.
That said, it has been exceptionally wet, but this doesn't alter the fact that building new houses doesn't appear to involve upgrading the roads/sewers/drains and so on to absorb new pressures.
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