Metamatic Forums Socialising The Green Room Floods in GB

All my family – Mum, Dad and Sister all now live in Sheffield (Rivelin & Crookes), like Alex they weren’t as badly affected as others, but it was (and still is) a very worrying situation.

Tewkesbury the last few days and today Oxford – I hope the worst has past. Glad to hear Rob and Ang are okay. Sorry to hear about you Uncle’s family Cerise.

What I fail to understand is; what exactly is it? The Government are saying ‘freak weather don’t panic’ and stamping on anyone who pops their head up and says ‘Global Warming’. Floods, Heatwave as Mark put it – the Mediterranean’s on fire – is it just freak weather?

Med on fire as in, literally? Or just very hot? Eek...

Hi Cerise,

According to the BBC;

'Up to 500 people have died in the past week from a heatwave in Hungary.'

'30 people have also died in the heatwave in neighbouring Romania.'

'In Serbia 30% of the country's annual harvest has been destroyed because of the heat.
Hundreds of forest fires have been reported in Greece.'

'In the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, thousands of firefighters, soldiers and local people battled throughout Monday night to stop a forest fire from reaching the country's second-largest city, Bitola.'

Didn't France suffer a similar heatwave a few years ago? I also remember that Prague had serious flooding a few years back also.

Yes, literally on fire I'm afraid. Some villages down south have been completely wiped out; however I wouldn't say it's a particularly 'freak' situation - we've had it hotter for longer in past summers. if anything it's been quite 'pleasant' by Italy standards. I've lived here for over 20 years and I'd say this July has been one of the coolest. That said we've had a heatwave over the past week or so, and what's making the fires worse are the winds which we don't usually get.
That said people have been complaining 'we didn't have a proper winter' ie. not cold enough. Mind you we'll probably have snowstorms and 'arctic' temperatures next year.

well ... i even dare to "predict" that before the end of this decade we'll wake up already in the early morning to very hot & humid weather conditions to be washed away by a flood-like rain around noon ... & go to bed on the same day as a snow storm blows away everything that isn't properly grounded - all in one & the same place then ! :-o

"freak weather" , eh ? >:-O

fact is that it's happening NOW , but we - the great majority of people on this planet - are simply NOT ready for something as serious as that ! :-/

@ least this "freak weather" will teach us a lesson or two right now ... & the 1st thing we should finally learn from it is to RESPECT NATURE a wee bit more ... or it won't respect us any longer then ! :-o

in the end it's jus' as simple as that - sadly ! *sigh*

ah well it's only "5 years and 151 days until the end of the world"

[ ..for those interested http://survive2012.com/ , and no we're not talking about the London olympics.. ]

it would be good , if people would FINALLY ( what else do u need to understand it ? ) take such things a bit more seriously !

really 'nuff said for now ...

Ok, but actually I don't think the 'freak' weather or climate change will mean the end of the world. That will come directly from man-made creations, e.g. nuclear weapons, or maybe a meteorite or something. Climate change is not good but we'll just have to adapt - there have always been floods, scorching summers and mild winters.

I agree to a point. The problem is we just don't know fully what 'climate change' will bring. Given that some of the predictions experts were making for as far away as 2050 are evidently taking place now, people and countries need to start seriously thinking about changing our ways faster than expected. Hoping for the best and assuming that we'll all be fine in the end is not one of those ways; not taking an interest will probably make things worse rather than better.

My organisation own a village and land on the Gloucestershire/Oxfordshire border and so our department en masse were all called over there this week to help assess damage and help get them back up and running. Sixty buildings were flooded out on Friday afternoon. We're lucky - our problems were nowhere near anything on the scale of Tewkesbury or Gloucester, but seeing the devastation this had on people's lives and homes - even on that small scale - was an eye opener I can assure you. We used to make incredibly detailed emergency plans for damage caused by fire - as an organisation, we're not even thinking of that now as water and rising levels of rivers are more of a long term danger than anything we currently deal with. And much more unpredictable on any level.

Glad to hear that you OK Rob.

I'm sure that that weather phenomenon and patterns will increasingly change this planet. Plently of talk but little or no action. Rant over

Peter