Winter flooding not guaranteed in UK but people should still prepare

The UK is not “locked into” a winter of higher flood risk despite recent wet weather, officials have said, but they have urged people to plan for all eventualities.

Officials from the Met Office and Environment Agency are urging people to be prepared for flooding a year after Storm Babet, which brought significant floods across the country.

And experts warn that climate change is making extreme weather events happen more frequently, with the downpours that brought flooding made more intense by human induced global warming.

England endured its wettest 18 months on record up to March 2024, with storms and downpours flooding homes, disrupting transport and leaving farmers’ fields waterlogged for months and hitting this year’s harvest.

Last month, some counties of England saw their wettest September on record, receiving three times the normal rainfall, and Oxfordshire and Bedfordshire had their wettest months ever – although the rainfall came after a drier than normal summer for much of the UK.

And variation in conditions across the UK in September, with northern areas experiencing drier than average weather, means overall rainfall for the month was only just above average for the country.

Dr Will Lang, from the Met Office, said many areas remained very wet, rivers were high and ground was sensitive to rain, particularly in southern and central England which had such a wet September.

But he said that did not mean it would continue that way throughout the autumn and winter, saying there was “still time for things to reset”, with more settled conditions likely to prevail in the next few weeks.

Dr Lang said it was too early to identify prevailing weather conditions for the coming few months, but pointed to a La Nina weather pattern likely to start developing in the Pacific which tends to favour cooler and drier conditions in the UK in the start of winter.

“Despite the recent wet weather, especially across England, we are not yet locked into a winter of elevated flood risk.

“There is still time over the coming weeks for rivers and ground conditions in England to return to normal levels, should we see the drier conditions dominate here over the coming weeks and last into late autumn,” he said.

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But he added that “everything was still on the table”, and warned that even if the country ended up with a normal winter, some flooding was to be expected.

“The advice is, as we would usually say, plan for everything, because a normal winter can even then include extremes of weather and some flooding, and there is still a probability, a possibility, of it either being a wet and flood-prone winter or conversely, a dry winter,” he said.

Caroline Douglass, executive director of flood and coastal risk management for the Environment Agency, said: “Climate change means extreme weather events are happening more frequently, and we have already seen an unusually wet September this year.

“We can’t always predict where the rain will fall or where flooding will occur, but we do know which areas are at risk.

“That is why it is essential we all do our part by checking our flood risk and signing up for flood warnings this Flood Action Week.”

People are being urged to check their long term flood risk, using a free government service to check the risk of flooding for an area in England, and sign up for flood warnings by phone, text or email.

They are also being urged to take steps to protect themselves and their homes, by keeping important documents in a secure, waterproof location, taking rugs and small furniture upstairs, and checking how to turn off electricity and water.

Around 5.5 million properties in England are at risk from flooding, officials say.

And Ms Douglass warned that people should never drive through flood waters, with 30cm of water sufficient to float a car, writing off the vehicle and endangering the lives of those inside it.

Floods Minister Emma Hardy said: “Through the recent launch of our Floods Resilience Taskforce, this government is taking decisive action to accelerate the development of flood defences and bolster the nation’s resilience to extreme weather.

“But this Flood Action Week, we must be all be proactive in taking steps to protect ourselves by checking our flood risk and signing up for flood warnings.”

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