Storm Babet Review
By Paul Homewood
h/t Euan Mearns
The Met Office have been desperate to hype Storm Babet into something exceptional:
We now have the official data available from the UK Regional Precipitation Series, and it shows it to be nothing of the sort.
The rainfall on the wettest day of Babet was 22.76mm averaged across England & Wales. There have been 44 wetter days since 1931 alone. In Scotland it was even less remarkable, ranking only 253rd.
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadukp/
Even in the Central region of England, it was only the 15th wettest day.
The Met Office have therefore resorted to what is known as data mining to get the result they wanted. The daily rainfall data did not provide the required results, or nor did the 2-day data, nor for that matter the 4-day data. So they presented the 3-day data, in order to claim that it was the 3rd wettest in England & Wales, and wettest in the English Midlands.
On the 2-day data, Babet was only the 11th wettest, whilst the 4-day period was the 8th wettest in England & Wales:
Of course, some areas inevitably are worse affected than others, that’s weather. But there is no evidence that Babet brought unprecedented amounts of rain overall.
The England & Wales Rainfall series only has daily data back to 1931, and we know there were many severe floods prior to then. But we do have daily data from Durham dating back to 1900 – the North East was said to be one of the worst affected areas during Babet.
According to the Met Office, rainfall was between around 50 to 80mm in the Durham area in the four days of the storm, the higher numbers presumably in the hillier inland regions:
Compare that to the highest 5-day amounts, which often exceed that 60mm, and it is plain that Babet was nothing exceptional, in Durham at least.
https://www.ecad.eu/utils/showindices.php?jd8m5lg0uenalld3gp29iie9nf#
The wettest 5-day period occurred in September 1976, with 140.7mm; as the Met Office explained at the time, the month as a whole was exceptionally wet across the country, with some areas receiving up to 400% of its usual rain.
https://digital.nmla.metoffice.gov.uk/IO_0c690483-2749-4636-a8ff-ded4e67efd3f/
On the 11th, Durham recorded 87.8mm, on top of the 32.3mm the day before:
Durham Rainfall per KNMI
Sheffield is another town highlighted by the Met Office during Babet, with about 100mm falling over the four days. But again we find that there have been much wetter spells in the past:
https://www.ecad.eu/utils/showindices.php?jd8m5lg0uenalld3gp29iie9nf
As the Met Office should have learnt by now, storms like Babet not that uncommon at all.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Why do they do it? Self- importance?
Power is the answer. They like to feel in charge. Another publicly funded body that prefers selective statistics. Verging on the fraudulent.
liardetg : Job preservation!
To justify their excessive funding?
I remember last year , about July time , when the media said that a satellite image showed East Anglia as mostly brown or yellow , and this was the result of Global Warming and the resulting drought .
Well , most of East Anglia is arable , and the crops do turn that colour before harvest .
So what happened to the Global Warming drought , or have they forgotten their previous lies .
They believe that climate change is real and scary so lying about it isn’t really a lie.
I found this very interesting and well presented account of the storm Babet a few days ago. https://jaimejessop.substack.com/p/babet-beast-from-the-east-a-meteorological
“third wettest independent three-day period since 1891….” And all the camp followers will take this as proof positive that, in general, it has only been wetter than 2023 twice in 132 years, but they will still accuse those with a healthy scepticism of cherry-picking the data to support their arguments! How much analysis must have been done to select a three-day period as the most dramatic – why not two or four days or a week? My grandchildren will be made poorer by all the useful idiots who are wedded to this cause. It was ever thus with religious thinking.
I remember “they said” it was going to get hotter & “Drier” so I stocked up on sunglasses 🙂
Well done once more Paul, would be nice to see this analysis ( and others) presented and debated on GB news, but will be taboo to Ofcom & their WEF leader. If Boris can get a job there maybe there’s a position / spot for yourself.
If so I’ll stock up on the popcorn, turn up the sound to here all the wailing 🙂
Scum Westminster & scum institutions which ever direction one looks.
The tentacles have spread far & wide. We need someone with a sharp axe !
Sadly GB News have an idiot called Dale who has swallowed the whole global warming scam not to mention runs a business to make money from it. At least they did have the respected John Kettley on to give a sensible comment on the recent weather.
The thing is there is always a way of using the data and finding a record…… with hundreds of potential measurement locations and the great variation over the country, there is often a record to be found.
“Lies, damned lies, and statistics.” — Disraeli(?) Twain(?)
“Thus the alteration of the truth which is already manifesting itself in the progressive form of lying and perjury, offers us, in the superlative, the statistics.” — François Magendie (1783-1855)
Call me a conspiracy theorist if you like.
Derby suffered from floods from the River Derwent. Severn Trent Water publish weekly on a Monday the fill status of their reservoirs here
https://www.stwater.co.uk/about-us/reservoir-levels/
Not last week though.
On 16th the three Derwent valley had enough spare capacity to fill the Derwent Reservoir. I’m hoping thar there’s no sinister reason for the failure to update
Hi Paul, many thanks for this, it’s very helpful. The set up here in NE Scotland is that the weather normally comes from the west and the east Grampian are in a rain shadow. Babet had slightly unusual trajectory and swung round to approach from the east, hitting the high ground of glens Esk, Clova, Isla and Shee and dumped a lot of rain. Our broadband is down and I’m on my phone and so will leave it at that for the time being. E
Did global warming cause this change of direction? No, it was just one of those things.
My friends and I are regular winter cod fishers on the rocks between Arbroath and Montrose, we relied on winds from the NE, E and SE to rough things up which brings the cod in near shore. The past few years have been poor fishing from what we see as a lack of good easterly blows, ( corroborated by Jaime Jessops ‘Lack of winter storms article) it’s still blowing from the East so hopefully we have a season reminiscent of the past !!
Now that broadband has stabilised a bit, last Sunday the main road S of Aberdeen was closed, so I took the mountain road up to Braemar and over Glenshee. I was surprised to see the mountains Lochnagar and Cairngorm white with snow, I’d estimate snow line between 2000 and 2500 feet. A week past Saturday, the second day of heavyish rain, it was 6˚C, just proving that warmer air holds more water 😉 Judging by the level of the river Dee today, I’d judge that snow was now melting. E
OT
Can the community help me analyze Sir David’s hypothesis ? He sounds like he’s stuck in early 2000’s and has not had time to refine his theory!
Ok, listening to the end. sir David is basically a communist and his understanding of The Science is formed by this… will say his carbon sequestration ideas along the lines of whale pooh and rice husks are interesting as it does not involve reducing our standard of living
We need a League Table of Liars.
The teams will include the Beeb, the Grauniad, the Met Office, the Lancet, the BMA, the UK Health Security Agency…
Babet was ‘gusting at 58 mph’ – is that the worst they can come up with? Storm Arwen two years ago looks stronger.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-59419772
Wind gusts . . . now there is something that stumps the meteorologists.
‘Babet also brought some very strong winds, gusting at over 50Kt (58mph) across north-east England and much of Scotland.’
Gusts are isolated and transient. Useless meteorologically. But great for selling newspapers. Or government reports!
Small area sets record in a series of 100 or so data points. Big deal. Given the heaviest rainfall is always pretty localised and relatively random, why would anybody believe that any small area has received the maximum naturally occurring amount in 100 years?
Is anyone surprised by this definition of impartiality?
BBC defended by Countryfile star: ‘Highlighting need for climate action is being impartial!’
https://www.gbnews.com/celebrity/bbc-impartiality-defended-countryfile-james-wong
I’m glad I gave up watching years ago
Looking at the East of Scotland data from 1931 to date storm babet had 7th highest daily rainfall