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Monday, December 7

Storm Desmond: incredible scale of flooding captured by Daily Mail aerial photos

I saw a report filed several hours ago that mentioned there had been one death but amazingly that seems to be the extent of the casualties so far from Desmond, and Wikipedia's article is still listing only one death.

It looks at this point as if the British military and all manner of rescue squads have done a great job at evacuating stranded people. But the Daily Mail headlines its updated report this morning by mentioning that some expensive flood defenses "failed."

I hope this isn't the Brittany coast scandal all over again. Remember that? Many of the seawalls from Napolean's time hadn't been kept up or reinforced, or both.

Well, if it was an avoidable failure the Mail will be sure to keep everyone informed. But at the moment I'll venture it was a Act of God given the huge amounts of rain that fell within a short period.

The Irish Times also has a report, posted about 8 hours ago, on the flooding in Ireland, county by county; here are the opening paras:

A post-Storm Desmond clean- up is under way across the country after heavy rainfall at the weekend caused serious flooding.

There were road closures, power cuts and flooding in some areas as Storm Desmond pounded the country for much of Friday, Saturday and the early hours of yesterday.

Met Éireann’s status red national weather warning was lifted at 3am yesterday as the high winds and rains abated. [emphasis mine]

The western seaboard was hardest hit by the storm, but extensive flooding was also reported in the south and northwest in particular. [...]
I'm not even going to try to post any of the Daily Mail photos; my blog format isn't large enough to do them justice, but The Mail has aerial footage -- still photos and video -- that for the first time reveal the scale of the flooding caused by Desmond in the U.K. 

Cumbria was hit very hard.

On second thought I'll post the kayaking photo because as readers might recall I collect those: On Warwick Street in Carlisle, Cumbria, yesterday:



 

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