Britons brace themselves for more floods

BRITISH PEOPLE are fond of talking about the weather. What they really enjoy, though, is grumbling about the rain. Fortunately, they have ample opportunity and a rich vocabulary, according to Alan Connor, author of a new book about rain in Britain. A heavy downpour can be “pissing, tipping, chucking or bucketing it down”. In the Midlands you might call it a “plothering”. Head to the West Country and you still hear “mizzle” (between mist and drizzle) and “letty” (just enough patter to make outdoor work trying).The grumbling won’t be letting up. Britain is getting wetter and, as a result, its inhabitants are being subjected to more frequent and devastating floods. After recent deluges, public agencies have warned Britons to get prepared and published data showing who is most at risk (see map).As a small island between an ocean and a continent, Britain’s weather is unusually hard to predict. (This is one reason it is so worthy of discussion.) Nevertheless, the pattern is clear. The 18 months to February 2024 were the wettest since rainfall was first continuously measured in 1836. The past two summers have been pretty wet. Last winter was very wet. In September, which is usually wet, England got double as much rain as normal. Ten counties had their wettest September on record. Gloucestershire took a dumping of 212mm, about what you’d expect in a monsoon month in India.All that rain made for saturated ground when the latest plothering arrived. The floods that followed in November and December were not especially bad by recent standards. Still, several people died and hundreds of homes were ruined. Britain is not alone in getting wetter. In many countries storms are becoming more frequent and intense, partly because the air can hold more water as the planet warms. Not all are being hit with more floods, though. To see why you need to view the landscape through the eyes of a raindrop.Each makes a journey. Some run quickly into streams, others seep slowly into aquifers. Rivers draw their water from a network of tributaries, like veins on a leaf. And it is in this that Britain suffers for its beauty. It is marked out by “unusually short and steep river catchments”, says Olivia Shears of the Climate Change Committee, a watchdog. That makes its rivers rise terrifyingly fast. The latest example came on December 7th, when the Northumbrian Aln surged fiercely in the wee hours and swept away Tom Voyce, a former England rugby player, as he tried to escape from his car, which was stranded in a ford.Not everything can be blamed on God. Many low-lying parts of Britain near rivers have been given over to housebuilding or intensive farming. That has not only put people at risk but severed the link between rivers and their natural flood plains, explains Trevor Hoey of Brunel University. Public agencies have sometimes been slow to issue warnings (although recent catastrophes in Spain and Germany show this is hardly a British problem alone). During a storm in December the Met Office, a weather and climate agency, showed off a new early-warning system: in near-unison some 3m phones across the Wales and the south-west of England emitted a sustained siren-like burst.Such innovations are hugely welcome. What is more striking, though, is the sense of what little politicians can do as the effects of climate change wash up on people’s doorsteps. Britain spends £1bn ($1.3bn) a year on flood defences. That is nowhere near enough to prevent more drastic floods, and it is unlikely to increase. Few experts think it is in any case worth persevering with ever-more expensive and costly-to-maintain engineering. Instead, the focus is shifting to natural techniques, like nurturing woodland or peatland alongside rivers to slow the flow of water.And to softening the blow for the unlucky ones. Even those who have bought a house in the middle of a flood plain can get reasonably priced insurance thanks to a state-backed scheme. Yet many still don’t, says Catherine Butler of Exeter University, probably because they haven’t heard of it or don’t grasp the risks. As the rain gets heavier one thing is certain: Britons are going to need their full lexicon.