UKC

Just watched the local current affairs programme here in Yorkshire, about the floods. Some incredible film of the flooding at its worst. And it seems likely it will get worse- warm air holds more moisture, milder winters and prevailing winds from a warmer North Atlantic means rainfall totals only going in one direction

Which got me looking at how wet other places are. Here in west yorks, average annual total is under 1000mm. That's pretty low really- ft William is nearer 2000mm annually. Other temperate coastal locations can be even wetter- Bergen has 2250mm. Western Alaska and chile get really, really wet though- puerto Eden in chile has nearly 6000mm of rain per annum.

That's 20ft. Makes glasgow look like a semi desert.

But even that's not premier league wetness- if you move from temperate zones to the tropics, things get properly soggy...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/earth/story/20150827-the-wettest-place-on-earth

Reunion- 8 ft of rain in *2 days*...!!!

What on early must that be like?

So, even taking the temperate regions, clearly it can get much wetter here. Building bigger walls doesn't seem likely to be enough of a solution.

Gregor

In reply to no_more_scotch_eggs:

I we hadn't cut all our forests down we would call our environment a rainforest, despite how dry you make it sound

In reply to Baron Weasel:

That's true- though the bits that would count as rainforest are more over on the west coast, rather than in Yorkshire. I suspect some are very wet indeed- if ft William gets nearly 2m of rain, some of the corries in knoydart must be well in excess of that...

I saw an interesting book the other day on British rainforests- lots of nice pictures, but 30 odd quid, too much for an impulse purchase...

I guess my point (if there was one in there...) is that if Yorkshire and Cumbria move towards west of Scotland type rainfall patterns due to climate change and warmer, wetter winters, then last months flooding is likely to become a lot more common- these are large catchment area rivers, with lots of densely populated areas downstream.



Gregor

In reply to no_more_scotch_eggs:

Glen dessary is almost 4m annual average rainfall to give some idea.