Predicting the Weather

While I realise that a lot of the people trapped in floods, or inconvenienced by the stopping of train services etc. aren’t having much fun, I do think it’s pretty impressive the way a number of agencies and organisations have been dealing with the unexpected effects of the weather.

Now OK, pretty much everyone should’ve known that yesterday was going to be exceptionally wet, with (according to a couple of sources) two months worth of rain dolloping down in 24 hours, but the unexpected bit came down to the effects of that rain on unexpected places. Over the last few years we seem to be getting a lot more cases where floods happen in places that’ve never flooded before – or at least have only flooded once every thirty years, or something. Yesterday, who expected that the M5 would be closed because of flooding, for example.

The quote that sums it up for me comes from John Kelly, Oxfordshire’s emergency planner (and what a weird job that must be, always expecting/planning for the worst or most bizarre situations. Hmm, must look at what it involves…)

We’ve ordered 150 sleeping bags from the Army… and some of my staff have gone down to the local Tesco to get things like towels, toothpaste and soap.
“This is part of our plan, this is a thing we plan for, and we make arrangements for, but things always go wrong.
“This is not the first choice of school, because the one we were going to had actually been flooded itself.” (from the BBC story linked above)

Yes, the place that was on the plan to be a safe haven from flooding was – um – flooded.

However, even with (I would expect) most people knowing it was going to piss down all day, how come I saw so many people in Cambridge yesterday dressed in just thin summer clothes, with no jackets, umbrellas etc. ? Did they just think that the prediction wouldn’t happen? Or that it wouldn’t affect them? Weird.