More storms, less drizzle

IN SEPTEMBER the Met Office, the national weather forecaster, began naming storms passing over Britain. On December 5th Desmond, the fourth such storm, arrived in the north-west, killing three people and flooding more than 5,000 homes in Cumbria and Lancashire. As weather patterns over the north Atlantic have changed, such storms have become more common. Desmond’s lesson is that the country is woefully unprepared.

Few of those inundated this week had expected the problem to return so soon. After severe floods in Cumbria in 2005 the Environment Agency, the body charged with keeping the waters at bay, built defences that were supposed to withstand anything less than a once-a-century deluge. Yet heavy rains have since overtopped them twice. Many in Carlisle, Cockermouth and Keswick have been flooded three times in the past decade.