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The rain falls on the plain, and not only in Spain

Ed the Editor's personal blog corner

It sounds as though the UK is underwater, more accurately, the rain has drained to the bottom end of the island and it is filling up fast, especially in the South West. I am not surprised though, because 5 out of 20 million homes are built on flood plains, the land has been compressed by heavy agricultural machinery, and the town planners have ignored the non-drainage effect of acres of concrete and tarmac. All in all, even without climate change, the UK has been turning into a big bucket for years.

They say the safest place to be is on a hillside. Logically you would need a biblical storm to be flooded out at 500 feet elevation, but there have been loads of incidents where villages have been swept away by water racing down the hill. No fun waking up in bed, bobbing around the bay.

In Spain they say, What belongs to the river, stays with the river. This is a useful thing to remember in arid regions where they go through several years of drought before the pressure drops and back comes the rain. Again, a lot of people have pitched up at a spanky new home built by unscrupulous and immensely dim developers. They aren't told the garden is a dried up riverbed and the dimbo builders are praying that it is safe because the river hasn't had water in it for years. No new home should be handed over without a canoe.

In the Sahara you should never camp in a wadi. These dried up waterholes and riverbeds can turn into raging torrents in minutes, and you never even realise it is coming, because the rain has fallen miles away and accumulated into a huge river out of earshot. Even not quite in the desert, 30 Sudanese died recently from drowning in Khartoum. Tragic, and you can bet that if the waters continue to rise the Blue Nile will mix with the White Nile and we will have to rename the mighty river, Pale Blue Nile 1 and 2.

Ultimately, Mankind doesn't have too much say about the weather, seeing as the sun is the main influence on our spinning rock, but we do seem to have influence on what happens in our locality. The Russians claimed they had a machine that would blow away the clouds to assure magnificent May Day parades, and now the Chinese are predicting zero bad weather at the next Olympics, thanks to a few well placed rockets! This level of control must be a commie thing? In the West, you have insurance, and a prayer that they pay out.

Got any flood stories?