The familiar phrase “the wrong kind of snow” was originally used as an excuse for severe disruption on British Rail in the 1991 winter. A very small amount of unusually soft and powdery snow had found its way into the electrical systems of locomotives, causing short circuits and engine failure.
It now seems that with climate change we are getting the wrong kind of rain – the sort that causes flooding. Europe has been suffering an increasing number of floods, and predicting where and when they will occur is important in reducing the damage they inflict on people and property.
There are apparently three kinds: flash floods caused by sudden downpours; floods brought on by days of steady rain causing rivers to burst their banks; and floods following snow melt. The good news is that difficulties caused by a sudden thaw, which brought such devastation to Britain after the great freeze of 1947, is less of a threat now because heavy snow is such a rarity. However, instead of the steady drizzle that the UK once experienced at any season, the country now has a seasonal mixture of cloudbursts and spells of heavy rain. This, plus the extra hard surfaces being constantly added to ever-larger urban areas, makes other flooding much more likely.
