By Paul Homewood
There was an interesting report in last Sunday’s Telegraph about recent flooding in the Somerset Levels. I’ll not reprint the whole thing, but would certainly recommend reading it.
The essence of the article is that the flooding there, which began late last month and peaked on 1st January, are the worst in living memory.
Now, anyone familiar with this part of England will know that the Levels are notorious for winter flooding, and have been since time immemorial. Indeed, according to Wikipedia, one explanation for the county of Somerset’s name is that, in prehistory, because of winter flooding people restricted their use of the Levels to the summer, leading to a derivation from Sumorsaete, meaning land of the summer people.
And, of course, King Alfred hid away from the Vikings at Athelney, in the middle of the Levels, protected by impenetrable swamps.
Consequently, when someone says “the worst in living memory”, I tend to get the pinch of salt ready! But when a farmer, whose house is flooded for the second time in just over a year, tells us that it had not been flooded for the previous 88 years, you have to treat the matter seriously. To quote the Telegraph:
For the moment, he and his partner, Linda, are living upstairs at Horsey Farm, because the ground floor of the building has been flooded.
“The carpets have gone, the floorboards will have to come up, the plaster will have to come off the walls, we will have to start all over again,” he says. They only returned to the property nine weeks ago, having been out of it since a similar flood in November 2012.
“Before that the house had not been flooded for 88 years, that’s the point,” he says. “People lived here for centuries without it being as bad as this. Something is definitely going wrong. The water levels have gone right up.”
So, is this all evidence that climate change is making floods worse, as many would have us believe? Let’s take a look at the Met Office data. I have outlined in red the rough area we are looking at .
As can be seen, although December rainfall was higher than average, it was not abnormally so. I have also included the November map, to show that that month was around or below average for Somerset, so there is no evidence of a long term build up of water.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/summaries/anomacts
We can also look at the December rainfall trends for SW England & S Wales. The area covered by this region is shown below. Although this region covers a wider range than just Somerset, a look at the above December map indicates that much of the region was wetter than the part we are concerned with. In other words, the regional stats probably overestimate the rainfall anomaly for Somerset.
Figure 1
The graph makes clear that last month’s rainfall was not unusual in any way. Since 1910, it ranks as the 19th wettest, in other words a once every 5 year event. The rain in December does not even compare with years such as 1934, when 307mm was recorded. In fact, it is noticeable that all of the really wet Decembers occurred prior to 1970.
Taking all months of the year, rather than just December, there have been 70 months with higher rainfall than December 2013. On average, therefore, the region would expect to see rainfall amounts as high as, or higher than, last month at some stage of the year every year or two.
We can also look at the stats for the local station of Yeovilton, about 20 miles to the south of the Levels, rather than the region as a whole.
The Met Office data, which runs back to 1964, shows 121mm rainfall for December 2013. However, the Telegraph article mentions that torrential rain on New Year’s Day made the floods worse, and a check with Weather Underground shows 18mm that day, so I have added that onto the Met Office’s December figure. (It is also worth pointing out that since 1st January, rainfall amounts have been close to average for January).
The resulting 139mm would represent the 14th wettest month since 1964, so about a once in three year occurrence. Given the evidence in Figure 1, it seems likely that many more such months would have occurred prior to 1964.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/pub/data/weather/uk/climate/stationdata/yeoviltondata.txt
Figure 2
It is utterly clear that there has been nothing unusual about levels of rainfall, so what has been going on in Somerset? This is where the locals in Muchelney make their views plain.
There is, however, one awkward challenge that has to be made to the villagers. The Somerset Levels were built to flood. The name of the village derives from the Saxon for “great island”. If people choose to live on a historic floodplain, how can they possibly complain when it floods?
“Yes, the fields are meant to flood, but it is too much now,” says Maxine Grice, a long-time resident of Muchelney. “It comes too quickly and it stays too long. It used to happen every 10 years and it was never this deep. People have been flooded lately who never were before. It’s because the rivers haven’t been dredged over the last 20 years. They have silted up.”
Others villagers agree this is why the flood levels have risen catastrophically. They blame the Environment Agency for neglecting the local rivers, which have now silted up so much that they can only carry a third of the water they used to. The theory is that this leaves the rivers unable to cope in the rain when extra water is also sent from Taunton and Bridgwater, from where it is pumped away to protect new homes built on former floodplains.
“We are being sacrificed in order to help those towns,” says Ms Wilson-Ward. “Yes, we are a small village but we are still taxpayers, we still need to protect our houses and our businesses like everyone else. The Environment Agency need to pull their fingers out, apply for whatever money they need, start dredging, get people down here and start fixing things.”
Final Thoughts
Similar complaints have been raised many times in recent years, but this case gives us real evidence that such concerns are justified.
Whilst Somerset is only one part of the country, and the performance of the Environment Agency may be better elsewhere, it is important that, if flooding problems are to be resolved, the actual causes are identified, so they can be acted on.
It really does not help the inhabitants of Muchelney, or the thousands of others affected by floods, when David Cameron, Corinne Le Quere, Chris Smith and the rest blame them on climate change, and think that building lots of wind farms will make things better.
Perhaps some of the money spent fighting climate change should be diverted to repairing our neglected flood defences and drainage systems.
Unfortunately, it is sometimes easier hiding behind excuses than taking the responsibility to do something about a problem. And it is also very convenient when those excuses support a political agenda.
Update
Christopher Booker, who lives in Somerset, made similar comments about the failure of the Environment Agency to dredge the rivers there. He also suggests there is a desire amongst many at the Agency to see the Levels return to the swampy wilderness that existed prior to the 17thC, when they were drained
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Never mind, when the ice sheets advance across Scotland in the next few years it will push it down; it will cover and stop the ruddy windmills, and save us the subsidies and Southern England will tilt majestically upwards leaving the Somerset Levels high and dry. Problem solved.
AlecM says: @ur momisugly January 18, 2014 at 11:19 pm
…The US might consider the same for its own corrupt bureaucrats and politicians.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I have considered it.
The problem is trying to recapture our judicial system when even the Supreme Court is corrupt not to mention Congress. Heck Congress just passed the “Anti-Occupy” law [that] ends American’s right to protest despite our constitutiona guarantee.
Are we now left with only the Thomas Jefferson Tree of Liberty quote?
I really really hope not because I think that is the corner they are trying to push us into as an excuse for ripping off the mask and implementing a totalitarian regime.
These are the reasons for my thinking:
Homeland Security under investigation for massive ammo buys
ACLU: The Militarization of Policing in America
Canada and the U.S. have signed an agreement that paves the way for the militaries from either nation to send troops across each other’s borders during an emergency…[it] allows the military from one nation to support the armed forces of the other nation in a civil emergency. Like during civil unrest.
The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 largely prohibited the America’s military from acting as a domestic police force. Unfortunately as of 2002 [n]ot much of the Posse Comitatus Act is left to repeal.
Obama signed an Executive on December 17, 2009 INTERPOL now has full immunity from U.S. laws. In short, a global law enforcement entity now has full law-enforcement authority in the U.S. without any check on its power afforded by U.S. law and U.S. law enforcement agencies.
For those who do not think the US government is our enemy consider that a Department of Defense document on EXTREMISM states:
The whole document was obtained via FOIA by Judicial Watch.
….
Ownership of land is the foundation of freedom… Land ownership was so cherished by our nation’s founders that they guaranteed that government could not take private property without just compensation paid to the land owner. This founding principle has eroded dramatically over time, especially since 1976″ ~ Land Use Control In short if you can not own property you ARE property. This is a major point of attack here in the USA.
Millinium Project:
I really hate where our ‘Leaders’ are leading us.
The British have suffered a disconnect from their history and therefore from reality.
I was commenting on the floods on the Somerset levels to a young female work colleague recently and was distressed to learn that she had never heard of King Alfred much less his retreat from the Vikings through the Somerset marshes. She didn’t even know the famous story of him burning the cakes as he sat pondering his next move.
The European federalists (communists by any other name) would no doubt approve of her ignorance. They see nationhood as an abomination to be stealthily dismantled.
blah blah says: @ur momisugly January 19, 2014 at 12:06 am
My apologies… I didn’t mean to suggest that farmers have been slaughtered… This was an aside about the periodic ritual slaughter of their farm stock, when there are perfectly good vaccinations available.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
A link to that whole sorry mess: NOT The Foot and Mouth Report on the 2001 foot and mouth epidemic in the UK. The report is a documentation of a royal bureaucratic Charlie Foxtrot. Anyone who thinks more bureaucracy is a good thing, especially a bureaucracy that takes its marching orders from the EU and UN should read it. A companion piece on the UN-OIE process called “Depopulation” (It is here in the USA too.) What is DEPOPULATION? KILL FIRST, ASK QUESTIONS LATER from the Arkansas Animal Producers Association.
The lunatics really are running the Asylum!
Reblogged this on gottadobetterthanthis and commented:
These floods in England are an example of how dangerous environmental regulatory agencies are the world over. EPA really is the most dangerous thing known to all mankind. We the people must rise up and stop the runaway regulatory agencies.
Off topic:
It appears the Aurora Australis is making very good time in its voyage to Hobart. It might get there as soon as 21st Jan – just in case anyone was thinking of providing a journalistic welcome party for Turney et al.
https://secure3.aad.gov.au/proms/public/schedules/display_sitrep.cfm?bvs_ID=19334
johnmarshall says: @ur momisugly January 19, 2014 at 2:42 am
….I will add that there is no such thing as a ”former” flood plain.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
If you insist on building on a flood plain you build FOR FLOODS. It is not like we do not have the engineering know how. We have had it for hundreds of years. PHOTOS
I live very close to the river Dordogne in the S.W. of France, fortunately there is a steep natural ‘step’ of about 10 metres and village we live in was built up on that, although there has been recent building work (as in the last 200 or so years) on the lower plains leading down to the river. Here the authorities send people around with information of what to do should flooding happen, not that that is likely at the height and distance from the water, however the ditches are always being dredged and the grass is cut regularly in the summer months, there have been floods in other parts of France recently but despite France having it’s fair share of ecoloons, the Farmers and the Govt. agencies prevail when it comes to coping with preparations for inclement weather, readily aided by the more accurate French weather forecasting.
I used to live in Pilton (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilton,_Somerset), originally known as Poolton/Pooltown and a port in the pre and post Roman period. It is now 20 miles from the sea, separated only by the Levels that in some cases are below sea level and all of which have been ‘reclaimed’ by agriculture.
The fact that nature occasionally comes back to claim what is hers causes me no surprise at all.
The EA, is stuffed full of paper pushing ‘common purpose’ dumber than dumb [down] apparats who do not know very much but know very well how to toe the line and that line is, “climate change is man made – anthropomorphic and that, we are all doomed unless mankind spends $£€Trillions on useless technology”………………….. in ‘amending’ a non existent fiction.
Engineers, real doers don’t much figure in the EA’s design, which is a bog standard quango which wastes £1 billion of our taxes per annum – the EA answers primarily not to Westminster but to the environmental lunatics and Nomenklatura in Brussels.
Rivers in the Somerset levels should be regularly and deeply dredged in their lower channels, if water is pumped downstream from built up areas in the upper catchment – it ain’t rocket science but that ain’t in the EA greater scheme of things is it? Ergo, flooding is made worse by man but not actually by man made climate change.
Extreme rainfall events happen but all through our long history they’ve occurred, evidently this is not unusual and Somerset is low and wet in parts. However, the liars choose to say they are and that man is to blame via the vehicle of CAGW, there’s not much we can do about the former but we can ALL do something about the latter – at the ballot box. Though with the caveat, that, when the British public finally wake up and collectively realize they’ve been had by the great global warming swindle – is anyone’s guess.
S MacDonald says:
January 19, 2014 at 1:05 am
I think you’ll find that Glover writes in the Sunday Times, he did write for the Telegraph at one time or another. However, it must be averred that, there can be no comparison between Christopher Booker and Charles Glover, one is an intellect who champions the truth and is constantly a thorn in the side of TPTB, a man who is [in the UK] the best known journalist climate realist and scourge of the alarmist loons. The other sold his soul to the cause of obsequiousness and to the politically correct propaganda of the consensus BS of; global warming and believes that all things EU are God given ambrosia from Elysian fields.
A few years ago a good friend worked for the Environment Agency with some responsibility for land drainage in the Somerset Levels. In conversation he expressed some ‘concern’ about how housing developers went about getting favorable reports from the agency so that they could build on flood plains.
To much water in Somerset and not enough water in California. Both seem to have at least some basis in a lack of sensible planning by government. Big land and water management projects require capital and political will which we all know has been sorely inhibited by environmental shamanism.
Enjoy the posts from those with personal experience.
But is dredging the answer??
As this daily mail article says, dredging simply makes matters worse – it passes the water to someone else downstream, and reduces the supply of water in the summer. So we get flood and drought, flood and drought.
the answer in this daily mail article, is to stop EU deforestation of farmlands, because it was the hedgerows and trees that stopped farm run-off into the rivers. if you can delay the water running into the rivers by a week, then you WILL not get river flooding.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2541773/Drowned-EU-millions-Thought-extreme-weather-blame-floods-Wrong-The-real-culprit-European-subsidies-pay-UK-farmers-destroy-trees-soak-storm.html
it is an interesting take on this flooding problem. And dredging, is NOT the answer.
Ralph
Monbiot has an interesting article in the Mail on Sunday today.
Apparently land under trees soaks up water at 67 times the rate that does land under grass. He goes on to say that the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy rewards farmers for removing trees on their land. Only tree free land is classified as agricultural. Hence according to Monbiot the EU has a lot of responsibility for the floods that have been seen in Britain.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2541773/Drowned-EU-millions-Thought-extreme-weather-blame-floods-Wrong-The-real-culprit-European-subsidies-pay-UK-farmers-destroy-trees-soak-storm.html
Sorry two minds with a single thought. Beaten into second place by a single minute!
Silver Ralph
The difference here is that the Somerset Levels are next to the coast, so nobody lives down stream.
Dredging will simply allow the allow the water to drain more quickly into the sea.
The farmers are slowly being strangled by the “re-wilders” – and many farmers would like to show these re-wilders what damage they’re doing but said activists aren’t green – they’re yellow and prefer lurking in the shadows.
This must sting the farmers as LAs in the levels contribute non trivial amounts of money which they see spent on new vehicles and relentlessly more “traffic cop” hiviz PPE for EA officials – but not a digger or a dredger in sight.
Chris Smith – EA chairperson of “The Wrong Type of Rain” and other stupid pronouncements is running away an about 8 weeks time to spend his ill gotten fatso pension – it’ll be interesting to see if they can dig up an even bigger boob to head this dysfunctional, expensive, ineffective monster.
As an aside, these EU subsidies are perverse and counter-productive in many ways.
For example, the hill-sheep subsidy means that the hill near us has three times as many sheep on it as the hill will support. The farmers now take lowland feed onto the hill to feed the sheep (which defeats the whole point of hill farming). However, despite all this effort, none of the wool and none of the meat of these sheep is used. They are left with old fleeces on, and left to die a ‘natural’ death.
Why? Because the farmers are farming the subsidy and not the sheep. The sheep themselves are worthless.
Sound familiar? Yes, the large landowners are doing exactly the same with wind farming. The electricity produced is immaterial, it is the subsidy they are farming.
Ralph
Observe recent flooding in the upper Susquehanna River basin (Google NWS BGM) in Upstate New York, USA, particularly Tioga and Broome Counties, in April 2005, June 2006, September 2011 for similar experiences as above. Flood prediction, rainfall event and flooding event frequency is woefully understood and, in my experience, understated. Since 1986 I have witnessed several NWS-declared 100 year, 500 year and 1000 year rain/flood events. Except in cases of well-documented events (last 100 years max) weather and climate people can only make an educated guess, at best. Drove us off our family home property of over 60 years.
Paul Homewood says: January 19, 2014 at 9:36 am
Dredging will simply allow the allow the water to drain more quickly into the sea.
____________________________
And then they will complain during the summer that they have never seen the ground so dry. – “Look, it is all cracked. We have never seen it like this before. We have a water shortage and a hose-pipe ban, on the Somerset Levels! It must be global Warming”.
/sarc.
Besides, if you dredge the rivers, are you not going to facilitate the spring-tide flood of the Levels? Remember the 17th century (1607 ?) tidal flood, that washed most of the Somerset Levels villages away. Do we really want to facilitate the ingress of these floods?
Face facts, the Levels are a historic flood plain, and should be farmed rather than settled upon.
ralph
Some people commenting here have already fingered the real culprits here, the Environment Agency which is chock full of incompetents and tree huggers. In fact their incompetence is so legendary a website called Inside The Environment Agency exists for employees (and outsiders) to ridicule the organisation.
This flooding is quite possibly one of the few things that can be legitimately blamed on global warming.
20 years ago, we were beig told it was going to get warmer and drier. Given that there’s never enough money on Government, dredging and flood protection were obvious areas that could be cut back.
Only, once cuts in public services have been made, reversing them just doesn’t happen. So, when global warming refused to play by the rules and the rains still come, the degraded (through neglect) defences can’t cope.
Ok, so maybe the blame lies with the reports of global warming rather than warming itself, but that’s cold comfort for those affected.
@Silver ralph
“And then they will complain during the summer that they have never seen the ground so dry. – “Look, it is all cracked”
There is a very effective network of rhynes and level boards by which the water table in the Levels can be controlled very accurately. The water may be penned in the summer to maintain soil moisture. In the winter the boards can be lowered so that the water drains out when the clyces are opened on a falling tide. There is more of a problem on the parts of the Levels drained by the Parret and Tone, which don’t have flood barriers.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jumpforjoy2010/12018328403/
Where’s the Duke of Bedford and his Dutch engineers when you need ’em and why can no one ever learn anything from history? In particular, I refer to the history in England of dealing with troublesome waters. There are men now abed in the Fens who could prescribe the solution to the Zomerzet problem in a trice. I know this because thirty years ago I got a lecture and/or a field trip every time I went to the local in Feltwell and said anything about the beds of some local rivers being higher than the surrounding ground. Windmills? They came to the Fens to pump water. Sorry about DEFRA.
According to this source ( http://rainforests.mongabay.com/deforestation/2000/United_Kingdom.htm) the UK is 88% deforested. One might conclude that further local deforestation in agricultural areas such as the Somerset levels would have a significant negative effect on the ability of the land to retain rainfall and release it slowly into rivers and other drainage systems. But we have a weird attitude to forests and trees in the UK. I live in the Brecon Beacons National Park, an area which is often described to tourists as an unspoilt wilderness. In fact it is a man made and ruined landscape that has been almost totally deforested. You will read similar stuff in tourist literature about Scotland…again, ” an unspoilt wilderness” whereas most of Scotland has been completely deforested by man. There is almost no discernible national effort to reforest the UK. But you will see many UK based charities and environmental campaigners trying to prevent deforestaion in say the Amazon basin or Indonesia. It seems that environmental campaigners prefer to focus their work on exotic locations rather than work in their own backyard.