Climate roulette in 'smell the coffee' month
...with a shot of extreme flooding
(Map Key Red: flood warning; Amber: flood alert)
It’s like playing extreme weather roulette. Spin the wheel once, you get a killer heatwave. Spin the wheel twice, you get an off-the-scale hurricane. Yesterday, it was our turn. First day back to work, and my head was already spinning with the number of things that I had to get done this month. January, really, should be called “Wake up and smell the coffee” month. I’d swear it takes a full two months for the post-Christmas hangover to go away.
By about nine, a complication had arisen: the wind had got up and it was snowing, large wet flakes fell upon chill pools of water on the gravel. I saw this and inwardly groaned. The blizzard had chosen work travel time to reach its peak. Even without climate breakdown, UK weather remains rather inconvenient.
I normally have an evening shift on Mondays, but was heading in early for training. I had to run to and fro from the car several times, getting my stuff together for work and trying not to get soaked. Fortunately, I thought, the snow was not settling, so the main road should be perfectly passable.
Wrong.
I turned onto the A15 and was proceeding downhill when I saw an enormous tongue of dirty brown water crossing the road. This was overspill from the saturated fields to my left. The train of traffic in the opposite direction was trundling towards me slowly, headed by a large HGV. The HGV sent a tidal wave of water in the direction of the little car in front, that was trying to cross the floodwater.
The water level looked a little deep to traverse, even though the forward car made it through. I remember once, a few winters ago, my parents had managed to flood the engine compartment of their car while crossing a similar body of water. That had immobilised their car. So I decelerated.
I winced as I crossed the water, travelling at a modest speed, and fortunately made it through. I breathed a sigh of relief, which soon died when I saw a long train of almost stationary oncoming traffic through the next village. The reason for the slowdown soon became obvious. The road was also flooded at the village’s far end. More lorries trundled through deep floodwaters, which had pooled on the opposite side of the road to me. And it was still sleeting. I remember thinking that if it had been any worse, I wouldn’t have made it through.
Fortunately, that was the worst of it. But on the final run into town, I was already worrying about the return trip. You’ll see on the left hand side in the map above three amber snakes crossing the horizontal road to Bourne. This is the A15. To get to Bourne, I’d crossed two of those snakes.
I should really have guessed the problem. We live on the fens, which is prone to flooding even without climate breakdown. We keep getting bouts of torrential rain. Locally, we’ve had standing water in quite a few fields for some time. The soil has been saturated, which by the way has been reducing crop yields in one of the most fertile areas in the UK. A flood like this was inevitable at some point.
See no Climate, hear no climate, speak no climate
I parked in the car park, which was also flooding, and headed into work. A number of people had failed to get into work: my manager, for example, lived in Sleaford which was further up the A15 and the roads were apparently impassable. The A1 was apparently also closed. Before training, I was able to check the UK government flood alert website, which listed 35 flood warnings in Lincolnshire. (This had increased to 40 by the morning of January 7th). Our flood was plainly marked out on Google Maps.
I put up a Facebook post. To tell the truth, the incident had put the wind up me, and I wanted a record:
I spent a good portion of what turned out to be a fairly quiet day worrying about our vulnerability on the Fens to flooding. I’ve long been aware that water levels on the East Anglian fens have historically fluctuated quite significantly. When I was a student, I worked as an excavator on the Flag Fen archaeological site, which was being run by Francis Pryor and Maisie Taylor. As well as excavating, we also gave tours, which included a large telegraph pole indicating how much the fen waters had risen and fallen over the last few thousand years. (Clue: a lot). In 2024, Francis warned of the risks of extensive near future flooding on the Fens, commenting that “our climate is changing - and we are not yet set up for that”.
This is very true. These are the same fens that have, in the last decade or so, seen an epidemic of house building; this is despite calls for a re-think of planning permission policies to avoid building in flood-prone areas. The new Labour government is also banking on a mass home building effort to ease the housing crisis and encourage economic growth. So no doubt many more homes will be built in East Anglia over the next few years. I often wonder how long such policies will remain viable. I also wonder how long it will be before those of us living on the Fens become climate refugees.
I had a number of conversations on the causes of the floods, and deliberately refrained from mentioning climate breakdown, because I wanted to see if it would be spontaneously discussed. It wasn’t. I heard about snowmelt up north, and a failure to dredge rivers and dykes. The latter is certainly an issue: the proximal cause of the day’s flooding for us had been the overwhelmed South Forty Foot Drain. This caused water levels to rise and continue to rise throughout the day. The floodwaters I’d had to pass were overspill from the Forty Foot. (See the Appendix, below, for the full report). But the central issue — that we’re getting more and more of these extreme weather events because of a failing climate — was not raised once.
That evening, I listened to a clip of the ecological philosopher Rupert Read on the Times radio. Rupert was discussing the need for climate adaptation. He stated that we’d failed to reach net zero by 2025, and that we were now living in the age of consequences. His interviewer commented on consumer resistance to environmental policies because of the expense of things like heat pumps and electric cars. I found myself again a little appalled by the general disconnect from material reality that still seems the norm in our culture.
Still, I doubt that sticking our fingers in our ears and humming will work as a long term strategy for the survival of our civilisation. Even though that now seems to be the most popular primary policy.
Let’s spin that roulette wheel again.
Appendix
Flood warning from the UK Government website, 6 January 2025:
Flood warning for Isolated properties and villages in the west of the South Forty Foot Drain and its tributaries
Updated 9:33am on 6 January 2025
Heavy rain is currently falling in the South Forty Foot catchment and will continue throughout Monday 6th January 2025. This is causing the South Forty Foot Drain to rise and the forecast is for it to continue to rise through the day. Low lying areas near to the river are already flooded and we now expect properties around the Bourne and Pointon Area to be affected from this morning onwards. Low lying properties near the river on Bourne Drove in Bourne are expected to be affected first. Further heavy rainfall is forecast for the morning of Monday, January 6, and therefore river levels are likely to continue to rise. Remain safe and be aware of your local surroundings. Please avoid contact with flood water. Our staff are out in the area to check the flood defences, clear blockages, and assist the emergency services and council. We will be closely monitoring the situation and this message will be updated online and on FloodLine by 10:00 on 07/01/25, or before if the situation changes. Source: https://check-for-flooding.service.gov.uk/target-area/053FWFPSFD01