Britain prepares for summer soaking

Torrential rain and gale force winds are expected to sweep through England and Wales over the next 24 hours.

Mud at Glastonbury
The Glastonbury festival has been a washout

The Environment Agency has 11 flood warnings in place after homes in the north Devon town of Bideford were hit by flooding of up to two feet after heavy rain last night.

The news does not bode well for tennis fans keenly awaiting the first day of Wimbledon. Just hours after British hope Andy Murray pulled out due to a wrist injury, supporters will now have to face stop-start play for most of the day.

The organisers seem to have chosen a bad year to remove the roof from centre court for repairs.

The entire month’s average rainfall - more than two inches - is predicted to fall in an area stretching from Yorkshire to north east Wales today, with up to four inches in some places.
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The exceptional amount of rain is likely to cause more widespread disruption and flooding than in recent days, especially in areas that are already saturated, the Met Office warned.

The downpours have the potential to cause trouble for travellers, and difficult conditions for revellers as they prepare to depart the Glastonbury festival.

The event has been a complete washout, as heavy rain throughout the three-day festival turned Worthy farm into a giant quagmire.

Marco Petagna, forecaster for MeteoGroup UK, said parts of England had received heavy showers yesterday, with nearly half and inch falling in one hour in Hereford.

He said the soaking the country has received in the past week is unusual for June, as are the temperatures - which dropped to 12 to 18C across the country today.

“That is quite cold for June but will be a feature of the next few days,” he said.

And there’s no sign of the summer returning any time soon.

“Tomorrow is looking like it might be a brighter day,” he said. “But if you’re looking for hot, dry, sunny weather, there’s not much prospect of it for a while.”

The hot weather in April, which was the warmest since records began 348 years ago, now seems to be a distant memory as the Great British summer washout continues unabated.

Telegraph.co.uk

The risk of a dam collapsing and inundating a number of villages in South Yorkshire reduced overnight but the danger is not over, engineers said today.

Pumping continued through the night to reduce water levels at Ulley Dam, near Rotherham and rebuild parts of the dam wall.

Yesterday, around 700 people were evacuated from their homes following fears that the dam wall might fail as areas of weakness appeared after unprecedented heavy rain.

The weather system that drenched much of Britain with up to 10cm (4 in) of rain in 24 hours was described by the Met Office as a once-in-a-century event.

A busy stretch of the M1 remained shut this morning between junctions 32 and 35 northbound and junctions 32 and 36 southbound, due to concerns about the dam, causing 15-mile tailbacks.

Police and other agencies were meeting today to decide whether the motorway can reopen, but urged people not to travel in the area unless it was essential.

As 17 huge pumps sucked 11 million gallons of water an hour out of the swollen Ulley Reservoir, almost 100 people from the downstream villages of Treeton and Whiston spent the night at makeshift rest centres in two schools and a leisure centre. Hundreds of others stayed with relatives or friends.

Even without a major damburst, parts of Treeton and most of Catcliffe were under several feet of water yesterday. Bemused residents watched as levels rose almost to the height of telephone boxes and caravans bobbed up and down the streets like rubber ducks in a bath.

Today, both areas were still badly affected although water levels appeared to have fallen by about two or three feet overnight.

A Rotherham Council spokesman said: “The risk of a major breach remains significant but the situation is currently stable.”

But the council’s strategic director Adam Wilkinson said the risk was reducing, as the water level in the reservoir had dropped by about half a metre (19 inches) since the pumping began. Engineers are aiming for a two-metre (6ft 6in) drop to reduce pressure on the dam walls.

Elsewhere in Britain flash flooding caused loss of life. Last night, police searching for a man who rang his wife on Monday afternoon from his mobile phone to say that his car was being overwhelmed by floodwaters, confirmed they had found a body with a submerged vehicle at Bow Brook, in Pershore, Worcestershire.

Timesonline

Some residents forced to leave their homes during floods in South Yorkshire have been warned it could be "many months" before they can return.

The stark prediction for Bentley and Toll Bar near Doncaster was made by Environment Secretary Hilary Benn as he updated the Commons on Monday evening.

More than 300 people were still living in temporary accommodation, he said.

Doncaster council said it would take another three to four days to pump the water from homes in Toll Bar.

Mr Benn reminded MPs of the long-lasting effects of the Carlisle floods in January 2005.

"Experience from Carlisle suggests that some properties may not be habitable for many months, " he said.

Mr Benn said lessons would be learned from last week's disaster and government spending on flood defences would rise from £600m this year to £800m by 2010/11.

The water only appears to be decreasing gradually - but I want to emphasise to residents the enormous scale of this operation
Martin Winter, mayor of Doncaster

Meanwhile, three severe flood warnings remained in place in South Yorkshire - two on the River Don at Bentley Moor and Thorpe in Balne and one on the Ea Beck at Toll Bar.

Doncaster Council said even more high-volume pumps have been brought in to the affected areas.

But despite firefighters from 26 services around the UK removing 346m litres of water per day, the Environment Agency estimates there is still about 1.8m cubic metres of water in the area.

Doncaster's elected mayor, Martin Winter, said on Tuesday he had been told by the agency that the Toll Bar area would take three to four more days to drain.

Mr Winter said: "The water only appears to be decreasing gradually, but I want to emphasise to residents the enormous scale of this operation not only on the ground, but co-ordination from behind the scenes.

"We are succeeding slowly but surely in the reduction of water in Toll Bar and will soon be pumping out 240,000 litres a minute."

It was also announced that Prime Minister Gordon Brown has agreed Local Government Minister John Healey will co-ordinate the government's contribution to recovery from the recent floods.

Mr Healey said: "We want to see communities, householders and businesses return to normal as rapidly as possible.

"I have seen first-hand the effects of flooding in my own constituency, Rotherham, and last week visited homes and businesses who have suffered.

"I will make sure central government brings a relentless focus to support the local recovery efforts and ensure that all of those involved play their full part.

"This will help ensure we move from a fully co-ordinated emergency response effort to a fully co-ordinated support for the recovery effort."

BBC News