Photographs of waterlogged English towns fill the front pages, with Tewkesbury, its abbey rising as a lonely island from the brown water, a particular favourite. There is "looting, panic-buying - and a water shortage", splashes the Times.
The water shortage is an irony many of the papers dwell on. A treatment plant flooded, leaving thousands of residents of Gloucestershire without clean water and supermarket shelves bare of bottled water. The Guardian reports that with thousands cut off by rising water, the RAF was airlifting people to safety in one of its biggest peacetime operations
The Sun goes for a celebrity angle. It splashes with an "exclusive" that the "bionic hamster" (also known as Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond) dumped his car after getting stuck in floods and "RAN 16 miles" to be home for his daughter's birthday.
But who's to blame? Candidates range from the government to global warming to Sweden to ... well, nobody, says the Telegraph. It is a peculiarly modern conceit that we are wholly in control of our destiny, opines the paper. Terrible things sometimes just happen, it shrugs. They are no one's fault, no one could have stopped them, and there is no one to sue. Above all, it says sternly, "there is no link between these weather patterns and CO2 levels in the atmosphere".
The Independent is having none of it. "After the deluge, scientists confirm global warming link to increased rain," it splashes. And, what's more, "it's official". The paper reports that a major new scientific study will reveal this week that more intense storms across parts of the northern hemisphere are being generated by manmade global warming. Later in the article the paper concedes that the study, to be published in Nature magazine on Wednesday, "does not prove that any one event, including the rain of the past few days in Britain, is climate change-related". But, the paper says, "it certainly supports the idea" by showing that in recent decades rainfall has increased over several areas of the world, including the mid-latitudes of the northern hemisphere, and linking this directly, for the first time, to the global warming that human emissions of greenhouse gases has caused. "Unless we act now," warns the paper, "there will be far worse extremes of weather to come."
The Express takes a similar line: "FLOODS CHAOS: IT WILL EVEN GET WORSE". But its thoughts lie in the short term rather than in global carbon dioxide emissions treaties. According to the paper, thousands of homeowners are "bracing themselves" as "a wall of water is expected to roar down the Thames through the heart of England". It holds "bungling ministers" to blame - as does the Mail. Where were the emergency preparations to clear ditches and drains, it asks. Where were the sandbags and pumps? The Times takes an even-handed approach, calling for the nation to be sensible and not to indulge in a "witch hunt for a human agent to blame and shame for nature's unruliness". However, flood control must be better coordinated, it urges, and the flood defence budget increased. More than anything, "building on flood plains is asking for trouble".
And the Swedish connection? Britain is stuck with its weather, apparently. Low pressure cyclones, which usually form much of Scandinavia's summer, are staying over the UK. The jet stream is sluggish, so the weather has got "stuck in a rut", the Telegraph says.
* This is an extended extract from the Wrap, Guardian Unlimited's digest of the daily papers.
