On Jul 5, 2:37*pm, "Jon O'Rourke" wrote:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Dawlish"
Newsgroups: uk.sci.weather
Sent: Saturday, July 05, 2008 11:35 AM
Subject: Springs + Rain + Southerly gales for the South Coast on
Saturday = flooding?

On Jul 5, 10:02 am, Alan White wrote:
On Sat, 5 Jul 2008 01:56:38 -0700 (PDT), Dawlish
wrote:

Finally a flood warning out and it's for my area.

Hardly 'finally'. It was issued at 15:39 yesterday.

--
Alan White
Mozilla Firefox and Forte Agent.
Twenty-eight miles NW of Glasgow, overlooking Lochs Long and Goil in
Argyll, Scotland.
Webcam and weather:-http://windycroft.gt-britain.co.uk/weather

First time I'd looked on there Alistair. Even someone with my interest
missed that warning, even though I've looked at the Met Office site
several times.

Flood watches/warnings are currently only available on the EA sitehttp://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/subjects/flood/floodwarning/

The Pitt review addresses most of what has been discussed on here recently
as Martin alluded to. Section 6 may be of interest if you haven't seen ithttp://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/thepittreview/final_report.aspx

Jon.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

I could cut and paste chunks of this to back my case for the dog's
breakfast! Recommendations 60-62 are particularly relevant, as is the
recommendation for further joint working between the MetO and the EA
and the personalisation of warnings for vulnerable groups. The joint
wrorking is certainly not apparent at present. There doesn't seem to
be any link from the MetO's Severe Weather warnings pages to the EA's
flood warning pages (though there is a link, under "helpful links"
from the EA site to the MetO severe Weather warnings site) and there
is absolutely no reference to possible coastal flooding on the Met
Office's warnings site, even though the number of SW flood watches had
been increased to 4 areas, this afternoon. I must admit I find that
incredible and very worrying. WHY does the MetO warnings page have no
easy link to the EA site and WHY doesn't the MetO have any reference
WHATSOEVER to the possibility of coastal flooding in Lyme Bay, this
evening??

It's not often I capitalise in my writing, but there are some issues
here that are so serious they could cost lives and livelihoods. It
begins to beggar belief that these links are not clear.

Like I say, I really hope there isn't a really extreme weather event
(extreme in the Pitt Report and to the Met Office, amazingly, is
defined as an event which happens no more than 6 times a year - A
YEAR!! Personally, I'd define "extreme" as something very different to
that, indeed "extreme" would be something I would not expect to see
many times in a lifetime. There's how people become used to the
warning site's "extreme" weather being something which is far short of
being really extreme; weather which people something they really need
to do something about.

The definition of "severe" events is this: "SEVERE – these events are
not uncommon particularly during winter months"............Well, I
just shake my head! Events that are not uncommon in the winter months
are simply NOT severe and there is no wonder that people don't take
the warnings seriously.

Paul