In reply to RyanOsborne:
> Sorry for thread hijack, but what's your experience of this in Sweden, do the forested hills help prevent flooding?
There is still flooding, we had the same weather system streaming over us from Friday to Sunday, plus another storm the previous weekend, the former being worse in terms of wind with lots of trees down and later wetter. There are still flood warnings out now in many places. So trees certainly don't remove all the problems, but not the loss of power or homeless folk like the UK. Here there are also a huge number more lakes and marshes to absorb the water before it reaches a river system. In the UK even farm land is heavily drained with many buried pipes etc.. so the run from all types of terrain is pretty quick.
Something I never thought of too much until a surveyor friend visited us, was that only in the cities and large towns do roads or tarmacs areas have a drainage system. Everywhere else, roads are generally a little higher than the ground around them and pretty extensive ditches either side. Not like a French drain though, no gravel or anything. The soak away is into the soil and the water runs off the roads as they are slightly pitched to help the water on it's way. This type of road also gives them somewhere to shove the snow in winter and plenty of visibility for animals emerging from the forest. As land is plentiful urban areas still have lots of green spaces too, even in cities. They will expand a city outwards, rather than build on all the spaces within it.
The lakes had exceptional rainfall, but it wasn't that exceptional, there have been other extreme floods in the past decade, or even the wee storm that eventually stopped the KIMM. So something needs to be done, as it is logical to assume there will be more every few years. More forests, ponds, lakes, dams, marshland to absorb the flow. All the houses could have gravel not concrete driveways. All houses can collect rain water from their roofs. Every farmer can have a grant to dig a small dam or pond on major streams on their land. Many little measures to delay the surge and avoid a peak, which any of us who walked in the hills grasp, as when it's really lashing down, streams come up and down in a few hours.
Post edited at 11:07
