Having Lots of Weather Here

There was a time when I assumed that the reason why the British and more so the English talk about the weather so much was that we are so culturally repressed. While I do feel that this is a small part of the reason, the real reason is that the weather has always been so important to our survival.

While Britain was the crucible of the industrial revolution, agriculture and as an island nation, fishing were so important to the lives and livelihoods of the people of these islands. For several thousand years weather conditions drove the activities that provided the ability for us to feed ourselves. Even as recently as forty years ago the majority of the population were engaged in occupations that were dependent upon the weather, and our ability to grow, collect or sell food.

Even now anyone who lives in a rural area is impacted and concerned by the weather. Tourism is boosted by hot weather, this can benefit a local economy with increased spending by visitors, or if there is a lack of facilities it can despoil an area with litter or pollution from engine emissions, or from noise and disturbance from inconsiderate visitors.

In the UK just a little snow just throws everyone, and it has a greater impact upon us than it does for people in other parts of the world who regularly have to live with snow in the winter. Often its just about ensuring that you are prepared for what will happen.

One of the aspects of the recent threat of flooding here that struck me was all of the houses where the media were visiting to illustrate the story were new build housing. While it would be glib to say that it’s only because of building homes on flood plains that are causing this problem, it is a major factor.

In the past people knew not to build in certain areas simply because they would suffer from flooding. However, partly because of the way people have become detached from the land and natural environment, this old knowledge has been lost. Further because people have much greater geographical and economic mobility, most people don’t have the local knowledge of the landscape that enable a population to know where it’s safe to live.

Then there is the problem that for years we have relied upon technology to provide solutions to all our problems. The difficulty with that is as King Chanute showed, no matter how much power you have, you cannot control nature.

Now as well as the normal weather patterns we should expect, we have the added factor of the unexpected weather events caused by a changing climate. The greatest obstacle to understanding about how we need to plan for this reality has been the media calling the problem Global Warming. That one phrase has made people assume that it will improve the weather. The reality people now have to cope with in the form of flooding.

However, there are lots of things that we can all do to help prevent this occurring, not just the people who are at risk of flooding either. One simple solution is to fit a rain barrel or two so that rainwater is collected. Most people will have some use for this water anyway and it may help keep your garden alive during a drought. As the average size is around seventy-five to one hundred litres in capacity, during heavy rains that is a significant volume of water that you are preventing from adding to the problem. While flooding involves millions of litres, if everyone were to contain that water, that would amount to one hundred and seventy-five billion litres saved.

The water saved by people in the upland areas would not then add to the swell of water further down the watershed.

The other simple action is to ensure that your patio, or cars hard standing is permeable. While having off street parking adds to the value of a property, every square foot of impermeable concrete reduces the grounds ability to absorb rainfall. Further, it proportionally increases the amount of water that soils have to absorb else ware and it adds to the erosion of that soil exacerbating the problem further.

While having a permeable patio is more costly, the cost of doing that is far cheaper than the cost of having your home flooded. And while there will be the cynical out there that will say that insurance will cover the cost of flooding, anyone talking to people impacted by flooding and those cynics will be silenced.

I hope that we British continue to talk about the weather so that we can learn to live with the reality of climate change. Incidentally, were in not for the fact that we are living through a period when the climate is changing, this rain would have most likely have fallen as snow, and that reduces the flood risk.

While I realise that none of this helps the people facing flooding at the moment, but in the future if we all took these simple actions then we would be helping our neighbours and ourselves.

My thoughts tonight though are with all those people who are worried and waiting.