Here’s an interesting one.
We’ve seen a very large increase in the last 5 years of big floods on the Wye, Teme and lower Severn
No such increase on neighbouring Avon - only 2 really big floods in 50 years
I suspect it may be due to the different weather setup needed to produce floods on the Avon.
It could be interesting to see if there is a detectable change in the weather dynamics causing the Wye floods - which is what I've recently been doing for larger scale European floods. Would any of those big Wye floods be a more obvious candidate to check?
Dec 17, 2024 07:59Yes, I would think so given the very significant rise in a short timescale.
There’s nothing very obvious, such as unprecedented single rainfall events.
They appear result from relatively modest 100-150mm over multiple days across upland areas. Maybe intensity has increased?
A quick check of the frequency of events similar to Feb 2020 event suggests 1973 could have been quite wet... the flow data doesn't seem to go back far enough for the Wye. Do you know if it was a notable year? I find an increase in frequency (but not intensity) of Storm Dennis-like storms since 1950
No, digitised gauge data only back to 1980s. There will be paper records somewhere. There weren’t any 5 metre plus floods in 1973.
Recent big floods (2014, 2020,2021) seem result of multiple wet weather events rather than one big one
