To all my peeps in central and western England...

[liz_marcs]

The Boston Globe reports that you guys are not just getting slammed rain-wise, but are also flooding out.

Yikes! The Globe even has pictures.

Yes, apparently your horrible weather and flooding situation is making front-page news in Boston.

Take care of yourselves and stay safe.

Comments

[rileysaplank.livejournal.com]

And Scotland isn't getting the floods even though on the whole we get more rain than England, because it's too cold.

[tessarin.livejournal.com]

The Uck near me is getting dangerously high but doesn't yet look like it is going to flood like it did a few years ago.

I imagine it will go onto flood warning sometime towards the end of the week and will most likely inundate Uckfield again.

[alainn-mactire.livejournal.com]

There are plus sides to living in Lockerbie...it may be a cultural wasteland likened to wartime Beirut, but it's too high for flooding.

Though given the torrential downpour outside my window at the moment, I pity anyone living down the way, at the bottom of the valley...

[crazy-vasey.livejournal.com]

It certainly isn't confidence inspiring to look at a map and see that huge areas of flooding around the area of the country you're living in. Meh. My flat's pretty high up; it'd take Noah's flood to get my stuff.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

Add to that the fact that there was just as much flooding about a month ago in counties about 100 miles north of the current ones, and you realise an awful lot of England has spent part of the summer under water!

[first-spike.livejournal.com]

Plenty of coverage and lots of photos and videos on the BBC news website.

Things are grim a few miles north of here. A major water pumping station is out of action (it's flooded, even though it was built away from the usual flood plain), as are a number of electricity substations, so something of the order of 350,000 people are without running water, and around 15,000 have no power. It could take a fortnight to fix the water, although the hopes are it'll be much sooner than that.

As for the rail and road networks...

The floods are expected to peak in the next few hours - there's a delay as the water works its way down from the higher ground. The highest recorded rainfall on Friday was 162 mm (about 6 1/2 inches), although many places received more than 100 mm (4 inches). Some rivers are 20 feet above normal.

Meanwhile, as one part of the government tries to explain why they need to work out how to be better prepared, another, well: The government has not ruled out more development on flood plains, as it unveils plans for 3m new homes by 2020.

The clue is right there in the name, old chaps. Flood plain. Flood plain.

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

It might be a crisis, but as yet precious little of a calamity - few people have lost their lives (BBC news reports have mentioned only one death), and aside from the dreadful damage to property, it seems like it will pass.

It is interesting that when there are similar catastrophes around the world, Britons strive to send aid. When it happens in our own country, most relief seems to come from the supermarkets - who have been making sure their stocks get through! Well, they have the logistics infrastructure, I guess.

[yma2.livejournal.com]

Mwehehe... I was *camping* in that...
Luckly the campsite didn't get too much of the bad weather, so aside from getting a lot of things very muddy I was OK. But I feel sorry for those who lost power and suffered badly because of it. It really was very heavy.

[booster17.livejournal.com]

*twiddles thumbs and looks out of window anxiously*

Yeeeeah... not the best of times here. That Tewkesbury picture? Half an hour away from me in Gloucester.

Heard about the water shortage yet? Right in the middle of all this flooding, we're currently on drought status. The flood water's hit the nearby water treatment plant, so can't trust the piped stuff anymore.

Vaguely surreal.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Fortunately London isn't too bad so far, though people are making anxious noises about the Thames overflowing downstream from the Thames Barrier. Also fortunately, my bit is on a gentle rise, high enough above sea level that flooding is VERY unlikely, and we still have pretty good Victorian sewers. Though knowing the crapness of Thames Water, who supply most London homes, any time now they'll tell us that the water isn't safe to drink or impose a hosepipe ban!