Severe weather warning for 0100 Thu 19/11/09 to 0900 Fri 20/11/09

[martinr]

Probably not a good weekend ahead for caving in the north west - the following warning (80% certainty) has been issued by the Met Office for up to 25cm of rain by Fri morning:

Early warnings of severe or extreme weather

North West England:

80% confidence that severe weather is expected in the next few days in Cumbria

Very Heavy Rain
Rain will become very heavy and persistent early on Thursday and continue until Friday morning. Rainfall accumulations of 50-100mm are expected quite widely, with up to 250mm possible locally over high ground. With this amount of rain falling onto saturated ground there is a high risk of localised flooding.

The rain will be accompanied by severe gale force winds.

The public are advised to take extra care and refer to the latest Environment Agency, Floodline, and Flood Warnings in force.

The public are advised to take extra care and refer to the Highways Agency for further advice regarding traffic disruption on motorways and trunk roads.

Issued at: 1235 Wed 18 Nov

 

[Rachel]

The road from Horton to Austwick was interesting in an aqueous sort of way this morning. A few of the puddles were at least a foot deep and when we got near clapham there were a few abandoned cars drying out on the grass verge!

 

[whitelackington]

Probably not a good weekend ahead for caving in the north west - the following warning (80% certainty) has been issued by the Met Office for up to 25cm of rain by Fri morning:

Early warnings of severe or extreme weather

North West England:

80% confidence that severe weather is expected in the next few days in Cumbria

Very Heavy Rain
Rain will become very heavy and persistent early on Thursday and continue until Friday morning. Rainfall accumulations of 50-100mm are expected quite widely, with up to 250mm possible locally over high ground. With this amount of rain falling onto saturated ground there is a high risk of localised flooding.

The rain will be accompanied by severe gale force winds.

The public are advised to take extra care and refer to the latest Environment Agency, Floodline, and Flood Warnings in force.

The public are advised to take extra care and refer to the Highways Agency for further advice regarding traffic disruption on motorways and trunk roads.

Issued at: 1235 Wed 18 Nov

Can that be correct Martin that's 10" 

 

[martinr]

Can that be correct Martin that's 10" 

I can't post a permanent link because the content of the page will change with time, however:

Met Office now saying up to 20cm rather than 25cm of rain expected.

Flash warnings of severe or extreme weather. Issued at: 0308 Thu 19 Nov 09

These are issued when the Met Office has 80% or greater confidence that severe weather is expected in the next few hours.
Local areas affected North West England: Cumbria

Warning type: Very Heavy Rain
Valid from: 0600 Thu 19/11/09
Valid to: 0600 Fri 20/11/09

Persistent heavy, and occasionally torrential rain is expected to set in towards the end of the night and persist through Thursday and Thursday night bringing widespread totals of 50 to 70mm. 50mm or more are likely in a 6 hour period at any time over higher ground. Locally up to 120mm are possible, with the possibility of up to 200mm across the most exposed fells. This rain will fall onto already saturated ground, and will be accompanied by southerly or southwesterly gales with gusts 55 to 65mph.

The public are advised to take extra care and refer to the latest Environment Agency, Floodline and 'Flood Warnings in Force', and refer to the 'Highways Agency', for further advice on traffic disruption on motorways and trunk roads.

BBC local news are saying the A6 north of Kendal is already under 3 feet of water. However there are no current flood warnings on the EA website for the River Kent?

 

[Pitlamp]

The worst of the weather over the next 36 hours (from Thursday morning) should miss the main Dales caving region - it's more Cumbria in line for big floods. Having said that conditions are still very wet here in the Clapham area (and I agree with Rachel that the "road of a thousand bends" was interesting yesterday). Definitely exercise great caution caving this weekend as it's really soggy already - the sort of situation where even a bit of rain on top of what's already happened can bring things up very fast.

 

[footleg]

For those of you who haven't come across this excellent source of information before, the Cave Diving Group website has a page with daily rainfall data for caving regions:
http://www.cavedivinggroup.org.uk/cgi-bin/vishtml

Note that the Dales has seen just over 100mm of rainfall in the last 7 days. The BBC weather report this morning is forecasting up to 250mm in the next 36 hours. BBC News - Flooding warnings for parts of UK

As Pitlamp says, the worse of that looks likely to hit the Cumbrian fells (a caver friend in Carlisle said yesterday that the toilets were already backing up at work!), but I think you can expect conditions in the Dales to be pretty treacherous this weekend.

I guess I won't be seeing that missing survey data linking KMC downsteam sumps to the Marble Steps branch any time soon Pitlamp?!

 

[JRL]

Looks like a good weekend for an Ireby Fell Cavern digging marathon!

 

[langcliffe]

Looks like a good weekend for an Ireby Fell Cavern digging marathon!

There's got to be enough of you - there's safety in numbers.

 

[Pitlamp]

Hello Footleg - I can't imagine us getting a push in at the MSB for some time - but do you have a problem with those data actually connecting KMC with the existing MSB data? You should have it all . . . .

If there's a problem just send me a direct message.

Back to topic; it's not been very wet today - just steady drizzle. Rivers were down this morning from yesterday's highs and only nudged up a fraction throughout the day. It wouldn't take much to bring them right up again though.

 

[Brains]

372mm / 14.64" of rain recorded at Seathwaite in the event from 8pm Weds to 4am Thursday. Described as a 1:1000 year episode
Apparently we are all due 25 - 30mm this Saturday...

http://blogs.news.sky.com/theweathergirls/Post:f99b19d4-cd8b-4b70-a9c6-aabfe6a05b8f

 

[Peter Burgess]

I'd heard that GG main shaft had become a resurgence.

 

[IanWalker]

I'd heard that GG main shaft had become a resurgence.

 

[martinr]

I suspect the Met Office are going to claim they correctly predicted this event. But did they got the forecast badly wrong?

Rainfall accumulations of 50-100mm are expected quite widely, with up to 250mm possible locally over high ground.

What we got was:

372.4 mm of rain at Seathwaite and 361.4 mm of rain at Honister between 0800 on Wednesday 18 November and 0400 on Friday 20 November.

Provisionally, the 24-hour total at Seathwaite (ending 0045 on Friday 20 November) of 314.4 mm is a UK record for a single location in any given 24-hour period. Records going back to 1914.

 

[Peter Burgess]

I'm not sure that's right, Martin (about it being badly wrong). I sensed they were warning of serious flooding well in advance of it happening. I don't suppose those affected care whether it was caused by 100, 200 or more than 300 mm of rainfall. Not a nice couple of days for those affected - let's hope it's not a precursor of more to come this winter.

 

[martinr]

I'm not sure that's right, Martin (about it being badly wrong). I sensed they were warning of serious flooding well in advance of it happening. I don't suppose those affected care whether it was caused by 100, 200 or more than 300 mm of rainfall. Not a nice couple of days for those affected - let's hope it's not a precursor of more to come this winter.

Hi Pete

There is a big difference though between 200mm over a couple of days and 350 mm in a day. If they had forecast 300 mm we would have known we were getting a once-in-200-years event, rather than a typically wet Lake District day, and I think there would have been an attempt to stop non-essential traffic and relocate residents from flood-prone areas in advance?

It will be interesting to see how the Met Office handle this. Will they go down the "look how brilliant we are at predicting" or will they say "we badly understimated the possible rainfall "?

 

[graham]

What would be wrong with them just saying

Holy shit that was a lot of rain!!!

 

[Peter Burgess]

There is a big difference though between 200mm over a couple of days and 350 mm in a day. If they had forecast 300 mm we would have known we were getting a once-in-200-years event, rather than a typically wet Lake District day, and I think there would have been an attempt to stop non-essential traffic and relocate residents from flood-prone areas in advance?

I am fairly sure the news this evening said that the 350mm figure was for a 48 hour period, not 24.

 

[martinr]

There is a big difference though between 200mm over a couple of days and 350 mm in a day. If they had forecast 300 mm we would have known we were getting a once-in-200-years event, rather than a typically wet Lake District day, and I think there would have been an attempt to stop non-essential traffic and relocate residents from flood-prone areas in advance?

I am fairly sure the news this evening said that the 350mm figure was for a 48 hour period, not 24.

Thanks for the correction.

372.4 mm of rain at Seathwaite and 361.4 mm of rain at Honister between 0800 on Wednesday 18 November and 0400 on Friday 20 November.

The 24-hour total at Seathwaite (ending 0045 on Friday 20 November) was 314.4 mm, so my figure of 350 was a litle high! However if this was at Seathwaite then I am pretty sure somewhere on the fells could have had 350?

 

[Peter Burgess]

In September 1968, on a Sunday morning, we had some 5 inches of rain in east Surrey (I think that's how much there was). The River Mole floods that resulted were pretty nasty, though probably not like the current problems. But I don't recall much concern at the time about how accurate the forecast was. Are we more obsessed by this sort of thing nowadays?

 

[kay]

I heard one of the BBC weather forecasts saying something on the lines of " ... it's not expected to be as bad as the floods of 2006" (or whenever the last flood was). I woke up this morning and thought "well they got that one a bit wrong, then"

In September 1968, on a Sunday morning, we had some 5 inches of rain in east Surrey (I think that's how much there was). The River Mole floods that resulted were pretty nasty, though probably not like the current problems. But I don't recall much concern at the time about how accurate the forecast was. Are we more obsessed by this sort of thing nowadays?

It may be a reflection of the improvement in weather forecasting. In 1968 we didn't really expect the weather forecast to be that accurate.