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Got to agree with Tristan if not push the arguement further! I completely undersatnd that an event like this is inevitable and especially with a super cell flooding is likely. But there is nowhere near enough money put in to flood prevention in the first place. It has cost the government £1 billion and the figure is still rising. With money like this flood preventions would I'm sure be able to withstand, if not significantly reduce the impacts. The drainage systems clearly have to be impreoved aswell. They packed in within half an hour and if they were better with the ability to hold more water then most of the flooding would have been greatly reduced. People keep saying its a 1 in a century flood but look at recent years. Within the last 5 years we have had, the hottest summers, most flooded areas, most snowed areas in Britain in 50 years. Clearly this shows that this isn't just a global warming. When we can see global fluctuation taking place, Britain need to make note of how other countries have coped with extreme weather conditions which are far worse than our own and the government need to dig deep into their pockets, and show some wonga so improvements can be made and people won't have to go through this again.

Sorry for the rant,

Stay safe and stay tuned for more updates from your favourite weather presenter...

Willy Willy Jackson

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Always looking for a different opinion to others I do agree with Walks to a large extent and I will tell you why. If it was unavoidable for the whole of the UK then why is it that London, probably one of the places most at risk if we just look at the physical landscape (eliminating their flood defenses), did not flood? See, they were avoidable if each community/council had been willing, as those in London were, to put in large investment into flood defenses. The problem is is nobody is sure how often these floods are going to occur and so most see flood defenses as a bad investment sadly! Also, the perception is that this has to be expensive; that's not always the case. Just look at Bedford, it only takes councils to vacate some land to be flooded in these times to save the rest of the town. Overall, I believe that with good management strategies being applied to all of the towns individually, like London and Bedford, these floods were avoidable.

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The hysterics shown in various videos shows nicely that It's not often that Britain experiences such extreme weather conditions. This meant that we were totally unprepared for such an event, which did contribute to it's devastation. Linking in with Strodey, I think the fact we are so urbanised across the country was a significant factor. It meant that rainfall in particular, had less infiltration time, less time lag and so lead to surface run off - resulting in floods. Also the drainage and sewage systems buckled quickly, adding to the volume of flooding and potential sanitisation problems. Again showing lack of preparedness for such extreme weather. On the other hand, the physical factors were, as many of you have said, unavoidable. It was inevitable that given the weather conditions, a supercell would form and there would be heavy rainfall. In December alone it rained 50mm more than expected and in reality we weren't prepared for this onslaught. Flooding in general was unavoidable, 4.4 billion gallons of rain is fairly hard to block; the extent of the impacts caused by the flooding could have been lessened, however.

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The UK faced extreme conditions in late 2012 that lead to a huge amount of rain falling onto already saturated land. I think that some of the flooding could have been prevented if the UK had been prepared with flood defenses. This is especially the case when flooding was caused by rivers bursting their banks as there are more conventional and developed techniques of stopping it. However in some cases, for example the flooding in Newcastle, there was simply too much rainfall to stop the area from flooding. In the space of 2 hours 4.4 billion gallons of water fell on Newcastle and the surrounding areas.

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Without repeating what has been said before that it wasn't avoidable, I'm going to try and go for an alternative view (although I think they weren't realistically). Still, with a large amount of rain and with the time of year (rivers being swollen) the floods could have been avoided by careful preparation and management of rivers and other areas prone to flooding. Although the physical creation of the extreme low pressure meant there was a lot of rain, it only floods land where there aren't adequate defences. These are generally areas devoted to flooding (floodplains) or where planning has not been good enough and they have subsequentially been breached. However, this is not black and white as if the ground is saturated, it is difficult to predict how the defences will stand up to excess water running over saturated ground as surface run-off. If you're not liking my unfounded argument that they were avoidable then I don't blame you. Realistically, the amount of water and the practical defences we had in place in the affected areas were not going to be enough to stop the flooding and without serious investment to an impracticle level, we were not going to stop the flooding although it possibly could have been managed better in more unprotected areas, especially around Bristol and Bath.

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The physical aspect of the floods was unavoidable. As warm air mixes with cooler air, heavy rain was produced. In many parts the rain was torrential. Also, the rain water met with sewage in older sewage systems, this caused over flowing as the water capacity was too much for the sewage system to contain. As a result, this caused further flooding in many parts of the UK (e.g. Dorset). This was one aspect which could have been avoided. If the UK government invested in separate sewage systems for rain water & sewage, the problem of over flowing could have been reduced, or even avoided. Furthermore, the reaction of people shows how unprepared the UK was as if the UK was truly prepared, & people were truly aware of the potential problems, they wouldn't be trying to have so much fun.

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I believe in some parts of the UK the impacts of the flooding could have been greatly reduced if the UK was more prepared and invested in any type of flood defenses. However the flooding in Newcastle was not avoidable as too much rain fell too quickly. In the space of 2 hours 4.4 billion gallons

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Warm air from the Atlantic pushing up and meeting this colder air from the North East is unavoidable. There were many bands of heavy rain and in such a short time infiltration wasn't quick enough and therefore surface run-off occurred and this meant flooding became an issue. A general school of thought is that Urbanisation does increase the chance of flooding as infiltration is lessened,. Specific to 2012 floods - Helston in Cornwall had 2 inches of rain over one night and 2 high volume pumps to clear water but with the local river breached in 2 places, it was a difficult issue to manage.

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There were many natural factors that influenced the floods. Warm air from the continents and warm air from the sub tropics met the cold air from the Atlantic, this caused low pressure as the warm air was sent to 12,000 feet. The 5Cs took place and a supercell formed. So from a natural side of things they were unavoidable. However, the lack of preparation and infrastructure to cope with the floods made the impacts worse.

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Is our weather getting worse?

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/is-our-weather-getting-worse/4od

The year the Earth went wild

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-year-the-earth-went-wild/4od

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Channel 4 Documentary

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-year-britain-flooded/4od

Abbeyfield Blog Post on the Floods with info links:

http://abbeyfieldhumanities.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/A%20Level%20Gg%20Rivers

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'The floods in the UK of late 2012 were avoidable'

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