Deke

Town in 'Not flooded' shock, horror.

Thursday, July 26, 2007 11:31:03 PM

I guess it's understandable that people who'd just got used to the idea that they hadn't been flooded out when suddenly they were, might be a little miffed about it and want someone to blame, but it seems to me a mite churlish to complain because you didn't get washed out.

The problem the Environment Agency had with this month's storminess was that it was a first. These 'super-rains' are usually a winter phenomenon, in the summer the earth isn't in the same condition and the computer models didn't work. Give them their due, they tweeked our delayed flood into the computer and improved their predictions for further downstream and were able to give a far more accurate prediction for other, more seaward, habitations.

Thus it was that last night the town of Reading prepared itself for the worst, and didn't get it.

Oh sure, they got some flooding, but others had piled up the sandbags and moved the furniture and nary a drop of liquid refreshment crawled under their doors. They interviewed one of these lucky escapees on TV and was he happy? was he relieved? was he snut. He complained about over-exageration and 'typical' over-reaction on the behalf of the authorities and wasn't too happy about the TV companies encouraging them in their endeavors.

Hopefully the Authority have made a note of his address, and next time they won't bother to over-react in his presence.

For some reason no one was taking up the al-fresco option...
Photo © Matt Bullock

Was that a mighty storm?You don't need floods when you have water on the brain.

Comments

Patotherplans # Saturday, July 28, 2007 3:32:15 PM

It could have been worse. Besides the obvious fact that not being flooded is generally preferable to being flooded. Not so long ago, here in the US, the state of Florida was getting hit with back to back to back hurricanes. One likely target city was evacuated, with most evacuees heading across the state toward a safer city on one particular major highway. Guess which city got hit and which was bypassed by the worst of the storm? That mistaken evacuation cost some lives as I recall. It certainly caused a lot of people to be stuck on packed highways in bad weather conditions and unable to get home where it was safer, drier and shelter was still standing.

Loiscakkleberrylane # Sunday, July 29, 2007 10:53:19 PM

I guess it's not easy to predict exactly where a storm will hit or how severe it will be. I would have thought that in this case people would have been very relieved.