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| Large swaths of northern Great Britain are under water this weekend due to record flooding. Photo from Getty Images |
They're saying 2015 is going down as the hottest year on record globally. It also seems to me to be the year of the flood.
It seems every time I turn around some record, catastrophic flood has gone on somewhere in the world in 2015.
It's hard to pin a specific weather event on climate change, but the warmer the world gets, the more likely an extreme precipitation event can occur.
Warmer air can hold more moisture, and if you get the right kind of storm, this added moisture can cause downpours much more torrential than would otherwise be the case.
In Britain, the hardest hit area seems to be fairly populated areas around Cumbria, where hundreds of people have been evacuated from badly flooded neighborhoods. Photos and vidoes from Britain show whole neighborhoods swallowed by water and scores of emergency workers pulling people from
flooded houses and apartments.
One death has been reported so far, but that might go up.
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| Evacuations in Carlisle, England this weekend. Photo by Paul Kingston/NNP |
Up to 13 inches of rain in a day in a town called Honister might break a record for most intense rain in the UK, according to The Telegraph.
Prime Minister David Cameron called a COBRA meeting, which is a gathering of top ministers that occurs when a really, really big emergency is going on.
Balmoral Castle, the Scottish retreat where Queen Elizabeth likes to go, was under threat from floodwaters, but so far hasn't suffered any damage of note.
Cumbria had record flooding in 2005 an 2009 and flood defenses were subsequently bolstered and made bigger to cope with more intense floods. But today's torrents overwhelmed even these new flood walls.
The flooding this time is also much more widespread than in 2005 and 2009.
Another storm is due to hit Britain early next week, which could complicate this situation even more.
Here's a news video of the flooding from Cumbria:
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