Map of the Week: Galoshes and a smile
It is a classic experiment on perception. Consider a beach holiday where it rains for the first three days, but the remainder of the week is dry and warm. Compare that with a similar holiday where it is sunny for the first five days but rains for the last two. Ask people which holiday had been spoiled more by the weather and they will tend to say the second - even though numerically, of course, they had more of their holiday spoiled by rain in the first example.
I mention this because I have just been sent the latest rainfall map for the United Kingdom and, given the deluge continuing outside my window in London right now, it puts the current storms into their proper perspective. Some people, as I shall explain, are cheering them on.
In the six months between May and October, the southern half of the UK saw average or below average rainfall. The northern half, including Northern Ireland, experienced above-average amounts of rain with the far north of Scotland winning the Hydrological Survey's most extreme description - "very wet".
Given the number of people who described the English summer as a "wash-out", this might seem a little surprising. For those who went camping in the Highlands, I trust you have dried out now. The figures for the past 12 months reveal an even starker picture.
Almost all of England and Wales had slightly below-average rainfall in the last year. Nevertheless, the reservoirs appear to be holding up pretty well with above average capacity for the time of year, although water stocks in the south-east are "seasonally low".
The expert assessment of last month?
"October was a mild month with a sub-tropical airflow re-introducing Indian Summer conditions over the last 10 days in south Britain especially. Anticyclonic conditions in mid-month brought autumnal mist and drizzle and, over the final third of the month, very warm sub-tropical air drawn north on the flank of continental high pressure created balmy and warm late-October weather. In Scotland, a very-slow moving frontal system brought prolonged rainfall to parts of the north-east on the 20th heralding an exceptionally wet interlude."
There is, as you might expect, an "enhanced flood risk in parts of eastern Scotland", but the rain-watchers at the survey are cheering the current storms in the south-east of England:
"The wet beginning to November, some parts of the south-east reported more than 60mm of rainfall in the first week, is particularly timely," they advise. "An unsettled outlook is also encouraging but much will depend on the actual tracks followed by the low pressure systems."
It is all about perception. Many of you, I reckon, will be cursing the rain and imagining that it is further evidence of a pretty miserable year of British weather. But for some, "unsettled" translates as "encouraging". Today I shall wear galoshes and a smile.
You can see the full Hydrological Summary here [2.04Mb PDF] and see more at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology.
Update 20 November: I have posted about the tragedy in Cockermouth in a new post.
I'm 
© MMIX~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~22~RS~)
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From my perspective I hope you are wearing something between the galoshes and the smile.
Sitting in the South Midlands watching the wind strip the trees bare of leaves I don't feel the weather this year has been all that exceptional. We had some severe blizzards in February, some wet weather at the end of July (bumper crop of courgettes as a result)and a delightful autumn (far better than last autumn which rained out a crop of squash). Nothing too complicated at all. I even walked over to the Great Ouse yesterday and that was relatively low for the time of year. Mind you our pond has filled up again as it was looking a little dry.
I am sorry for anyone who had to dodge floods: we have had some dreadful ones in past years. I cannot express enough sympathy for people with their homes and lives wrecked. Fortunately we live halfway up a hill and so escape such difficulties with soft landscaping and gravel courses which can act as paths in dry weather. There has been too much incontinent development on flood plains permitted by local councils anxious for the rate income.
This is a very mild start to winter which augurs either a balmy winter or something we will pay for later: take your pick.
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Is it really perception, or is it that if it rains towards the end of the week the activities you have "put off" until those days can't be done, however if it rains at the start of the week you can arrange your holiday better.
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Just wanted to say that I love these statistics-heavy posts with the excellent visualisations. Real data! Keep it up.
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I was getting fed up of the media and people in general talking about the 'wash-out' summer. It wasn't a wash out, June and most of July were pretty awsome, I had numerous BBQs and day in the park adn got sunburned a few times.
I suppose it's just classic human nature, you notice the nagatives in a situation much more than the positives.
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Mark,
Why is the recent data compared to 1961-1990? Because that's the dataset that was available, or because it conveniently comes out the right way to make the story?
Keep up the good work.
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You may be a bit too complacent about the reservoir levels there.
Given where they started at the begining of your graph they aren't that good now. OK, maybe they didn't get depleted as much in July and August as you'd expect, but they didn't get filled last winter either.
The graph shows a marked downward trend for all of the last year, in contrast to all the others, and we seem to be missing the uptick in October as well. If we see the same pattern next year as this, we won't be above average at all past December...
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The above provides all the evidence you need for the justification to build a national grid for water. Only two main pipes required, no need for pumps at the Romans could probably have done it and the Victorians put in really useful infrastructure for water without pumps. One key aqueduct from Kielder to London down the east, with a connecting and intersecting in Yorkshire line from the lake district. This could create thousands of jobs and perhaps cost the public little if the water companies were mandated to fund it from their fat cat profits.
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It has definitely been drier this autumn where I am, in the last 10 years we have flooded in 7 of those years at the end of October (anywhere between 4 and 14 inches each time)
It has come close this year but no floods yet.
End of March is the other danger period but as the weather is usually getting warmer it dries out quicker.
#7 brossen99
Spot on.
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Mmm...some places it's wetter, some drier, some years more, some years less. No real trend.
Specifically - no real evidence of the 'put a brick in the loo, drought is coming' predicted in the 90s or the 'invest in sandbags for flooding' predictions of the early 2000s.
#7 brossen99 - totally agree: the lack of infrastructure to cope with rising population in the south is a scandal. As you say the victorians would have sorted this.
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brossen99 & jon112uk
"As you say the victorians would have sorted this."
You're right, but then again, the Victorians didn't have such a large population to deal with. They also didn't have the same restrictive planning regulations, employment regulations, land rights, protected areas and all of the other things we have to deal with today when carrying out national infrastructure projects.
It wasn't uncommon for whole towns to be destroyed by the Victorians when they were building railways, reservoirs and the like, could you imagine the uproar these days if we tried that sort of thing ?
The only way we'd get around that sort of thing would be to build an underground water network and that would be extraordinarily expensive.
My preferred plan would be to relocate the government to somewhere in the midlands, we could keep London as a financial & cultural capital but have our political capital somewhere else.
If all of the different ministries, and their employees, were moved to the midlands it would take at least a million people out of the Greater London area and this would reduce demand down there dramatically.
We could then give the Palace of Westminster & Downing Street to the National Trust to run as tourist attractions as well as having loads of government buildings that we could sell off.
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The Victorians passed individual Acts of Parliament for each railway etc. These usually went through with little or no public scrutiny. Imagine that today!
I can't think of a case where "whole towns were destroyed by the Victorians" but they certainly cut through the crap in driving infrastructure development. And it was necessary. Piped water and mains sewerage did more to improve the wellbeing and life expectancy of the people than all the medical and surgical developments put together. You have to live long enough to take advantage of medicine!
It won't happen but it's perfectly possible to relocate Parliament and government - Australia, Brazil and others have done this, while Chile relocated Parliament to Valparaiso while keeping the ministries which needed to be in Santiago there.
The logical place would be Birmingham. Somewhere near the NEC and airport?
But I would go further and have Birmingham the seat of the English Parliament. Westminster could remain the location of the UK Senate, which would deal with the matters which the four nations of the Federated Republic of the United Kingdom had agreed should be done of a federal basis.
One can dream...
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badgercourage
In the 1880s the village of Llanwddyn was destroyed to make way for a new reservoir that was being built by the Corporation of Liverpool, more information can be found here:
http://www.abandonedcommunities.co.uk/page32.html
This kind of thing wasn't uncommon, although the scale obviously differed depending on the size of the project.
I'm certainly in favour of a Federated Republic, I think I'd prefer the name of Great British Republic or the Republic of Great Britain though, a Republic Kingdom looks a bit too much like an oxymoron and the other nations would only make fun of us for it :-)
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@11 The acts of parliament used to build railways in the victorian age suffered massive amounts of public scrutiny! Often whole prospectuses were printed in the newspapers, petitions drawn up in favour or against schemes (often created by rivals) testimony before committee in the house was followed on a daily basis - they were the reality tv shows of the age!
On the subject of the weather, i think part of the problem is that the weather has been more concentrated. Thus, whilst we may have had only an average amoutn of rainfall, it has occurred, not gradually throughout the month/year, but in short burst (stories of a months worth of rainfall in one night etc). Thus it only SEEMS worse.
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#12, Yes, lots of small-to-medium sizes villages were obliterated, not just by the Victorians but later as well (Kielder etc.), and by the Army too. But not whole towns, as happened(s) in Germany and eastern eueope for lignite mines.
#13 Agreed, many especially the major trunk routes did get intensively debated and I should have been a little clearer in what I was saying. The GWR for example lobbied intensively aggainst the LSWR line to Devon and held it up for a decade. The railway companies also needed to raise huge amounts of money (and there was also lots of share-puffery), which accounts for the printing of prospectuses and much of the other publicity, Capitalim Rools! But most of the smaller lines seem to have gone through with little public scrutiny or debate, especially by modern standards. And the debate was largely focussed on the rich, who had the resources to lobby. The ordinary public had no say in any of this, they just had their houses and land purchased compulsorily...as they will if Heathrow Runway 3 goes through.
Not necessarily a bad thing, per se, it all depends on the balance of public advantage. When should the public good override private interests?
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ps #12 "I think I'd prefer the name of Great British Republic or the Republic of Great Britain though, a Republic Kingdom looks a bit too much like an oxymoron"
That would leave out Northern Ireland, as GB means the island - we are technically the 'United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland' at the moment. Though I take your point.
"and the other nations would only make fun of us"
And you think they don't already...?
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# 12 & 15
I've always thought the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to be far too clunky. That's why I'd probably go with Great British Republic, referring to the British Isles rather than just Britain. We could keep the GB label then too.
Either way though we could change the definition of Britain/British far easier than we could change our system of government from a Monarchy to a Republic.
If you guys are thinking of starting a revolution then be sure to let the rest of us know, it sounds like fun !
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Why not jettison some baggage and drop the Britain/British bit and have Realm/Republic of the Isles and we become the Islanders.
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Mark
I think you need to check your colours in Scotland. Why is 121% blue in Arran, Kintyre and Islay and yet black in the west Highlands? And shouldn't the 131% in Fife be black? Of course it spoils the banded effect and it just goes to show you cannot trust what you read in the media.
I give you F minus.
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10. At 11:46am on 17 Nov 2009, General_Jack_Ripper wrote:
brossen99 & jon112uk
"As you say the victorians would have sorted this."
You're right, but then again, the Victorians didn't have such a large population to deal with. They also didn't have the same restrictive planning regulations, employment regulations, land rights, protected areas and all of the other things we have to deal with today when carrying out national infrastructure projects.
....
The only way we'd get around that sort of thing would be to build an underground water network and that would be extraordinarily expensive. ..."
=========================
On the other hand the victorians didn't have the level of wealth and technology we do.
I saw one plan which showed most of the route from north to south for a water grid being done by existing waterways with only a very few additional man-made links and hardly any pumps to join it all up.
I think the issue here is having the will rather than having the capability.
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jon112uk wrote:
"I think the issue here is having the will rather than having the capability."
That pretty much sums up all British infrastructure programs of the last hundred years, we never lost the capability, we just lost the will to get the job done.
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#20
Last 100 years is a bit unfair - what about the National Grid?
Say last 40 years and you'll be about right.
We still train great engineers but most of them now have to go overseas to find interesting and rewarding work...apart from a few working for F1 teams etc.
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These statistics are not particularly useful as they don't indicate the rainfall requirements of each region nor do they make any allowance for the fact that over the years the population has both grown and shifted, mainly towards the South East.
A brief trawl through the BBC's own articles shows that
"the Environment Agency says that in the south east of England, the population has less water available per head than in countries like Egypt and Sudan"
see http://www.bbc.co.uk/threecounties/walk_through_time/12.shtml
There is also no mention of the fact due to water shortages they are now building a water desalination plant in London see:
http://www.thameswater.co.uk/cps/rde/xchg/corp/hs.xsl/2802.htm .
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11. At 12:10pm on 17 Nov 2009, badgercourage wrote:
"...But I would go further and have Birmingham the seat of the English Parliament. Westminster could remain the location of the UK Senate, which would deal with the matters which the four nations of the Federated Republic of the United Kingdom had agreed should be done of a federal basis..."
Man, I like your thinking. A Federal United Kingdom - the acronym itself says it all. Or what about the Federation of the Union of Countries and Kingdom. Perfect.
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SHLA2UK wrote:
"A Federal United Kingdom - the acronym itself says it all. Or what about the Federation of the Union of Countries and Kingdom. Perfect."
Nothing short of Genius, I love it !
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#23, 24
Or to give it it's full title, the "Federated Union of Countries and Kingdoms Democratic Union of Peoples"
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So would that then make England the Federated Union of Countries and Kingdoms - English Republic Sector ?
And if the Irish joined us they could have a new political group called the Federated Union of Countries and Kingdoms - Irish National Group.
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Given that climate change will dramatically affect our weather in the future and given that we are struggling to cope with the current flooding caused by increased rainfall, you do have to ask what the Environmental Agency and the government is doing to prevent re-occurences of such flooding?
Though there seems to be plenty of action occurring when the floods happen there seems to be precious little, proactive action to prevent flooding occurring in the first place.
Are we expected to sit by as more and more people are affected unnecessarily because rivers were not dredged or because river and coastal defences were not built up to cope with the new demands of the weather?
Each year we never seem to have enough resources and staff to deal with such crises.The insurance industry must be inundated by claims and it must cost them and the members of the public affected a fortune every time this happens.
My sympathies go to all those affected by the flooding especially to the family of the missing policeman, who I pray will be found alive and well.
New Labour has never been strong on strategic planning and sadly has not learned that prevention is better ( and often cheaper!!) than cure.
Let's hope and pray that the situation improves quickly and people can get their lives back to normal.
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