Storm Babet - Extreme rainfall NE Scotland and widely elsewhere*

[OhYouBadBadKitten]

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/warnings-and-advice/uk-warnings#?date=2023-10-19

An unusually early warning for the low possibility of some extreme rainfall for NE Scotland at the end of the week. Note the text of the warning!

Please keep a close eye on this one and be prepared to act if necessary. Ensure that if you live in an at risk area that you are ready.
https://ready.scot/respond/severe-weather/rain-and-flooding

*[Please note - title edited again by MNHQ at OP's request to reflect evolving situation]

I will admit that I haven't read this thread past the point that I put my earlier post in it so don't know if this has already been posted but apparently the Environment Secretary in the UK stated during a Commons Committee hearing that Storm Babet was hard to predict because the rain was coming from the East and not the normal way, from the West.

😬😬😬

Edited to add a link to this story:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/oct/24/risk-from-storm-babet-hard-to-predict-as-rain-came-from-east-claims-therese-coffey

STILL raining here in Fife. No trains North out of Edinburgh today. Only going to get worse...oh, and with exquisite timing the Queensferry crossing will be closed from 22 hours on Tuesday! God knows how DS is going to deliver a week's performances this week. Maybe the audience wont notice the lack of a bass line!

The report above said it was coming from the South, and couldn't go East coz Norway, basically. Meanwhile, the usual flow of air was coming in from the West. So the depression carrying the storm got stuck.

Depressions rotate anti-clockwise, a bit like a big slow rainy wheel. If one becomes stationary, which is rare, the same rainy bit (sort of like a spiral spoke IYSWIM) arrives from the West, twirls round anti-clockwise via the South, and then comes back in from the East. This one was, to all intents and purposes, stationary over the British Isles for several days.

All the Environment Secretary had to do was to sit and watch the Met Office weather forecast animation, each day - it was hardly unambiguous! It didn't take long to watch it all, I know coz I did it myself If something can't be put in a memo or on a single side of A4, in writing, it's too hard for many politicians to understand. PPE, unfortunately, has no science, maths or stats components (cynical )

Rain again here in Suffolk - quite clear a lot of waterways must be blocked still because we have a lot of roads flooded (nothing deep enough to flood houses again) that wouldn't normally flood with that level of rain.

They were at fairly normal lowish levels yesterday so I don't think it's just that the water was higher than normal.

[the Met Office animations] were hardly ambiguous
FFS