What Caused Severe Floods In The 1950s, Sky News?
October 24, 2023
By Paul Homewood
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2023/10/22/sky-blame-babet-floods-on-climate-change/
Sky think that climate change is making floods worse.
Maybe they might like to explain why flooding was so bad in the 1950s:
A trawl through the Met Office monthly weather reports of the time finds these references to severe floods:
- Feb 1950 – Considerable flooding in some districts.
- Nov 1951 – Severe flooding in many parts of the country
- Aug 1952 – Lynmouth floods
- Nov 1952 – Serious flooding in Sussex
- Jan 1953 – The Great North Sea floods
- May 1953 – Severe storms brought heavy rain and floods, particularly in West Scotland causing “much damage”
- June 1953 – Severe thunderstorms brought “exceptionally heavy rain” causing “severe flooding and considerable damage”
- July 1953 –Widespread thunderstorms seriously affected crops in West Midlands and Central Scotland, with local damage due to lightning and floods, with some loss of life.
- Aug 1954 – Considerable flooding in some areas
- Oct 1954 – Severe flooding in NW England, N Wales and S Scotland
- Nov 1954 – Serious floods in many parts of the country
- March 1955- Serious floods in the Midlands
- July 1955 – Record daily rainfall in Dorset led to severe flooding there. (279mm at Martinstown is still the highest daily total for any station in the UK)
- Aug 1956 – Widespread flooding
- Oct 1957 – Floods in Wales and NW England, with 12.71 inch of rain recorded at Blaenau Ffestiniog in a four-day spell.
- Nov 1957 – Torrential rain led to floods in many areas, particularly the Midlands
- Sep 1958 – Widespread flooding in Wales
These are just the major flood events. There would be many more minor ones which never got a mention in the monthly summaries.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
What is making flooding worse is probably due to building infrastructure in flood plains, not to mention all that concreting over people’s front gardens and a lack of maintenance of water courses. Why people buy houses that planning authorities have allowed to be built on flood plains is beyond me. Maybe it’s because of the dumbing down of education.
Aye, and when the Koonsil tore down houses on a Floodplain, AND later built new ones there …. you can spit & Fizz as much as you like. But as I said , now a coupla weeks ago, this is all a Generational thing too: Former generations forbid their children ( on the farm ) to do / try out new practices ( Yes there are exceptions – but the social media wasn’t there and Teachers were maybe seen as Elders, – to be obeyed or taken with a pinch of Salt, as Means to an end or just suffered. Today we see people taking crops of Late hay and even Silage in the beginning of October in the higher Latitudes and even altitudes. OK Technology has helped BUT there are casualties.
I am thinking of the increasing scale of rotational Monocultures, if you like: Large fields operated by fewer operatives with very big aka HEAVY machinery. Can’t be everywhere in the same season (Operating over several Postcodes – a Lottery! ) so between creating large tracts of BARE soil or Late season Wheel rutting + Tramlines you cannot have the entire nation’s food harvested on time by a select few Operators ( Democratic – did you vote for that ? ) and the soil conditions encourage run-off …. Would be inclined to say that in Brechin ( as shown on TV ) there was more field land in the houses than in the Hinterland. Why didn’t the great MSM fly over that Hinterland to show us the detail of where the runoff came from ?
We were fortunate enough to miss all that but got a heavy dose ( unreported by now) a few days later with Social Media bubbling about local road closures… field runoff and soil choked drains. The Trees are still 3/4’s in leaf – despite the wind and are now at last though late, showing excellent Autumn colours.
The problem is that although the model mapped fluvial flood extents, on which development siting decisions are made, are modelled with the best information available.
In many areas this information is not reliable and the data set constantly changes with every new development.
Furthermore many of our cities and towns are built on ancient river terrace deposits (sand and gravel) and the behaviour of groundwater in these deposits is difficult to predict and almost impossible to model as you cannot see it until it appears and causes flooding.
the 1950’s eh? Well now, thou’ not quite O/T , watching a Sat Prog on Architecture this morning Teabreak, and my kwik research re: Seagram Bldg: In the 1950s, burning vast amounts of coal and oil seemed worthwhile to many, given its capacity to improve the living and working conditions of an ever-increasing proportion of the human population. But now that we know the potentially catastrophic consequences for the planet, we must exorcise the ghost of Mies. See more at https://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/buildings/it-is-time-no-longer-to-praise-the-seagram-building-but-to-bury-it .
So we see how far and how big the Hydra has become. Long time past beginning to decapitate . but how many heads are there now ?
It is only recently that it has been realised , or admitted , that Volcanos can massively increase the amount of water in the atmosphere .
https://www.science.org/content/article/massive-undersea-eruption-filled-atmosphere-water
Perhaps there were a lot of eruptions at times in the past that led to large increases in rainfall around the world at various times .
But you can be sure that would be covered up to try to claim Climate Change .
The website you site for support of your comments is very misleading and in parts just bad science. The author of the report obviously has not a clue as to how the greenhouse effect actually works, obvious from his false comment that
‘water absorbs incoming energy form the Sun, making it a potent greenhouse gas’.
Water vapour is transparent to incoming short wave solar radiation, it is the emitted long wave I/R radiation from the Earth surface and within the atmosphere that are intercepted.
The constant switching in the text between ‘atmosphere’ and ‘stratosphere’ does nothing but confuse those not knowledgeable about how GHGs actually function, as well as giving the false impression that it may cause extra rainfall.
The amount of water from the eruption is given in litres to make it sound more, and the reason it has increased the water vapour in the stratosphere by a massive 10% is because the stratosphere has such a low water vapour content. This volume of water if added to the troposphere would be totally insignificant.
If you have accepted the text of the article it is no wonder that you have come to the wrong conclusion.
https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/goddard/tonga-eruption-blasted-unprecedented-amount-of-water-into-stratosphere/
Well , NASA seems to disagree with you . So perhaps everybody is wrong except you .
And are you trying to say that an extra 100 billions litres of water in the atmosphere will not fall as extra rain over time .
You ask whether Sky would like to explain historic information. The answer is that they would not and even more seriously, they could not!
I live in Derby, we had alleged record floods from the River Derwent , we also had some in 2007 I think.
I have asked the Mayor if the weirs on the Derwent, there are three from the city centre to about two miles downstream had any impact on the flooding. Each about 1-2 metres high. There are no levees to compensate for this. raising of river level. Nor has there been much work in keeping the river maintained as you have to do once you start messing with it. The city centre Longbridge weir was modified about 10 years ago to include a hydro electric plant to power the Town Hall. Also the city centre Derwent Bridge has very low clearance over the river.
Sadly the Derby Silk Mill a museum of industry and history of Derby was quite badly damaged. This is Lombe’s Mill the first successful silk throwing mill in Britain. Originally built on an island in the river in the early 1700s. The island is no longer there, just one of many changes to the river.
The Derwent Valley reservors were 76.3% full and Carrsington Water (pumped from the Derwent) 88% full, on the 16th October, so far no update for 23rd, it’s published weekly by Severn Trent Water. If they aren’t all at 100% full it will be a surprise.
Glen are you the artist formerly known as Ben Vorlich?
Yes, but a few weeks ago I had issues logging in here. I couldn’t get my old alias to work so changed, if you keep going up Glen Artney you get to the Ben.
so did i – i was charles allan
Very pleased to hear that glen, I was getting concerned you may no longer be “with us” either in body or spirit!
I had troubles logging in as well on several occasions so on Gamecock’s suggestion I loaded up an avatar to wordpress/gravatar ( a handsome one at that!) and all problems were cured.
Regards
Ray
I’d overcome the problem by creating an account before I saw the alternative. I’m quite happy with that at the moment, I can comment from the laptop or phone without having to type everything in once logged in.
Glenarty just replied to your video on the babylonian flood account – could not find a reply button
It’s amazing that more people don’t know about the 1953 North Sea storm and subsequent floods, damage and deaths. It’s the our worst natural disaster in modern times. In the UK, 531 people died on land and at sea. Overall including Netherlands and Belgium, 2551 died in total.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sea_flood_of_1953
Building on a flood plain is just plain idiocy.(Sorry)
A few miles to the east of me, approval has been given for a housing development on a flood plain. To achieve this, the land will have to be built up, requiring a stonking 85,600 lorry movements delivering ‘soil and infill material’ to raise the land surface by up to 6 metres. One would think that even an idiot would realise this merely displaces any flooding to elsewhere in the immediate vicinity ~ including a school and pre-existing housing NOT on the flood plain. Apparently not.
Also not far away from me to the west is Canvey Island, which suffered greatly in the great flood of 1953. 58 deaths and 10,000 evacuated. It’s far more densely populated today, so one would imagine that regular drainage maintenance would be a major requirement. A few years back, a relative who’s lived on Canvey for decades told me that they’d seen a very rare sight ~ a road gully and drain cleaning team. Unfortunately, it took the crew many hours to clear the drain. Why? Because it was clogged to the brim with soil, concrete and other builder by-products plus all the normal highway detritus that had been washed into the road drains over many years. That was just one drain in one road. The state of the drains and the resulting water accumulation in the road after even moderate rain had been repeatedly reported to the local Council to no avail, ditto the condition of the highly important major drainage ditches on the Island. Cue, with much fanfare, a major clean-up policy was announced, with the typical tin-ear of local authorities ignoring the fact that it was THEIR responsibility to have kept the vital drainage infrastructure clear in the first place!
No doubt they would have found a way to blame it all on that modern universal excuse for local authority incompetence, ‘climate change’…..
Oh but those guys are the Creme de la creme of Idiots: Super Idiots, if you like, No use us “experts / keyboard warriors” trying to compete with them – they already have the yards ahead experience over us.
They no longer have the excuse of a period of lower rainfall which created the belief that flood plains were no longer needed. It is complete idiocy not to understand that any excess water will have to go somewhere if not there. I hope they don’t think the water can go on farmers’ fields in the belief it can do no harm.
Well, of course, it matters not what history tells us about flooding and WEATHER patterns. Apparently, according to ‘a study’ (computer model, of course) we’re all going to drown under five + meters of melting Antarctic ice!
charles allan
Noah’s flood will not happen again according to prophecy – so we will need to let the Pope know that God is in charge of the weather
The flood before Noah.
God is indeed in charge of the weather until Gods’ people pray! From the epistle of James chapter 5 in the New Testament section of the Bible:
(17) Elias (the OT prophet Elijah) was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain: and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months. (18) And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit.
(KJV on-line @ https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/James-Chapter-5/
Pray that Elijah takes the climate change obsessives up to Mars where there is almost no climate change so they get what they with for.
GLENARTY – FROM CHARLES ALLAN – sorry cant see reply button :-
It was the GENESIS FLOOD by henry morris which converted me to the truth of Genesis . He was a civil/water engineer and proves that all the topography of the earth relates to the flood and the ark is definitely a barge like shape about half the size of the Titanic
which could easily hold the circa 15000 air breathing species and the design is exactly as the bible describes .
There are about two scaled copies in the world . But I saw photos of the real ark from the Navarro father and son Ararat expedition . The pointed version further down Ararat looks big enough, compelling yes but it could be another boat from that time.
It is also well covered in Answers in Genesis by Ken HAM
This Babylonian version has been copied and mimicked from the book or oral account of Moses – there are quite a few fakes from different cultures but they dont make sense or match the evidence from our sedimentary water laid land – as high as 80% +
“Sky think that climate change is making floods worse.”
Think? Paul you do them a courtesy they don’t deserve. If they think at all, it is probably about losing their benefactors’ funding if they fail to push the climate narrative.
Climate Change in 1954
https://www.google.com/search?q=heavy+rain+and+floods+in+dublin+in+1954+ireland&rlz=1C1GCEA_enIE962IE962&oq=Heavy+rai+and+floods+in+Dublin+in+1954&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqCQgBECEYChigATIGCAAQRRg5MgkIARAhGAoYoAHSAQozMTY0MWowajE1qAIAsAIA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:22c0f632,vid:Jbb4ibQuZkk,st:0
A few years ago (2B.C. I think) I attended a planning committee decision hearing on a housing development just outside Whitstable by Canterbury City Council (CCC). In answer to councillor raised questions about flooding the developers referred to the swales they were proposing for short term water holding and flood mitigation.
An irate CCC councillor stood up demanding to know what concern it was of the neighbouring local authority ( Swale Borough Council) to be interfering in issues not under their jurisdiction. A CCC official quietly explained to the councillor what a “swale” actually was and the even more red faced councillor sat down. Probably out of embarrassment of his own ignorance the councillor voted in favour of the application. The application passed and a load more houses were built in an area almost guaranteed to flood within a short timeframe.
I have since come to the conclusion that if those that decide on such decisions to build in inappropriate locations are not plain corrupt, then they are as thick as shit!
As an example of certain councillors’ ability to prove that the speech part of their brain is not connected to the thinking part (assuming that part exists), I have yet to find a better example (from 50 years ago) than the councillor — his party affiliation I think speaks for itself — who confused two good old 1970 favourites, nuclear-free zones and anti-apartheid by proclaiming how glad he was that ………. was an anti-apartheid free zone!
I kid you not. The cub reporter next to me at the press table nearly fainted. In the interests of the “bigger picture” we agreed not to include the comment in our reports! For which the council leader was duly grateful.
Here in N Wales I heard of a planning meeting where there was a proposal to have duck pedalo’s on Llyn Padarn, one councillor asked ‘ I’m not against progress but who’s going to feed them in the winter’.
Meanwhile …….
Just to once again point out the claim – “normally”. In other words, one offs versus averages once again. But those areas have had serious rain before, just not very often. We all know that Man City don’t “normally” score six goals but they have done and will again. It’s not climate change when they do.
A point of interest, back in the Common Market agricultural subsidy era when huge mountains of butter, beef and milk and wine lakes were proliferating throughout Europe the owner of a small Yorkshire company invented a device called a mole plough, which greatly facilitated the draining and bringing into use land that was otherwise too wet for agricultural purposes.
The device sold well throughout Europe and he did very well out of it.
To see the effects of this device take the B6479 north from Horton-in-Ribblesdale and note that some fields have been mole ploughed and some haven’t, it is easy to tell even decades later.
Stop asking Sky News for science fact – they only deal in illusions & fantasies – it’s what sells
An excellent centralised resource for extreme hydrological events is maintained by the British Hydrological Society here https://cbhe.hydrology.org.uk/ The statistical analysis of extremes – floods and droughts – was my life through most of my career at the Institute of Hydrology in Wallingford. They, like all others collated by the IPCC, fail to find any hint of a climate-driven trend in either the magnitude or the frequency of flood events (characterised respectively by the instantaneous peak river discharge and the annual number of events exceeding a fixed threshold).
Other measures, such as the cost of damage resulting from inundations, do often exhibit a trend but they are not climate driven,
I would accept that there is a tendency for flood predictions (such as the 100 year return period flood) to be exceeded more often than they should be. But again this has always been so, and has nothing to do with climate change. What it points to is the need to use statistical models that are better able to accommodate yet to be observed “biggies”.
Hydrologists and water engineers should be weaned off the Generalised Extreme Value family commonly used in the trade to extrapolate from the past observations out to future possibilities and instead adopt a distribution with a “fatter” tail like the Two-Component Extreme Value Distribution which is standard in Italy for evaluating earthquake return periods which takes into account local and regional data.
The general principle behind this is to use the at-site data to model statistically the generality of events but to take a regional perspective for filling in those extra large events that have occurred elsewhere in the region that are out of the order of what may have been observed at that site but for which there is no reason why that can not at some time strike at the site of interest.
Paul
Thank you for your thankless endeavour to highlight the hypocrisy of the warmistas.
Up here north side of the Tay estuary we do have flooding issues.
In my opinion caused in the main by a quango called SEPA (Scottish envio MENTAL protection agency) which prohibits the dredging of waterways.
The other issue is that the north east of Scotland is ‘rising up’ (chance would be a fine thing!) due to our recovery from the last ice age burden.
The lower part of Brechin is built on the floodplain of the North Esk river which due to the rising coastline (falling sea level) cannot egress to the German Sea as it did before.
I wonder could I get funding for this if I titled it “The consequences of falling sea levels on a boiling planet”
Paul, politicians in the Scottish Parliament based in Hollywood are proclaiming climate change is here and now. At the moment we have a big El Niño developing in the Pacific and last year we had the Hunga Tonga volcano eruption that was massive sending a gazillion tonnes of water vapour into the stratosphere. Is there anything to hang our hat on leading into the 1950s that might explain the wet weather? For example atmospheric testing of atomic bombs?
Best
Euan