Britain isn’t ready for ‘weather whiplash’

Last night, I was woken by the sound of hammering rain. After Britain’s hottest summer on record, it came as both a surprise and something of a relief — even when great blobs of the stuff began dropping through the skylight onto my duvet.

But as I drifted back to sleep, images from the terrible flash floods in Nepal seeped into my mind. I couldn’t shake the apocalyptic videos that had filled my social media feed earlier in the day, of people desperately fleeing a fatal tsunami of mud and water.

By the morning, it felt like a premonition. After months dominated by devastating heatwaves — we’ve had five so far this summer, with the chance of a sixth next month — Britain is now being told to prep for intense storms and flash-flooding.

A yellow weather warning for thunderstorms is currently in force across huge swathes of England and Wales. Heavy rain has caused significant flooding and major travel disruption across parts of the Midlands, and we’re told that other parts of the South East could receive a month’s rainfall in one day. People in dozens of areas deemed at risk of flash-flooding, with drought-affected ground, have been urged to assemble an “emergency kit”.

Any minute now, Louise Haigh will send out one of her nationwide mobile alerts, telling us it looks like rain, so remember to take a brolly.

After months of scorching temperatures, the deluge. While the lawns of England are crying out for water, parched since a near-nationwide hosepipe ban, I don’t think we’re set up for the weather whiplash that’s coming.

Judging by the weather forecast this Bank Holiday weekend, we’ll find out soon enough.

If the summer of 2026 wasn’t unbearably hot enough, with temperatures around the country regularly reaching into the mid-30s, climate scientists warn it could be one of the coolest summers you’ll experience for the rest of your life.

Thunderstorms aren’t unusual in my part of the country, Cornwall, which is at the mercy of weather fronts that come in off the Atlantic, bearing the brunt of almost every Storm Tom, Dick and Harriet that makes landfall. But I’m not sure even we’re prepared.

According to the Met Office, there’s going to be an “unprecedented” El Niño this autumn, leading to more storms and heavy rain. So why aren’t we doing something about it?

Risk analysis for last year’s Climate Change Committee suggested around seven million homes are already at risk of flooding, prompting it to conclude that the UK “is not appropriately prepared”. According to the researchers, a major issue is inadequate drainage systems for dealing with intense rainfall.

It’s all very well for the national government to urge us all to install water butts to catch rainwater from our gutters, to ease the strain on the nation’s already overwhelmed sewers whenever a biblical downpour hits; and that we should stop paving over front gardens to make parking space for a second or third family car. But it seems we can’t even get the small stuff right.

A friend reports that the drains in his part of east London have been caked shut with mud for years, meaning that his streets in Newham, a borough mostly well above sea level, flood after every downpour. Yet it is apparently beyond the council’s wit to send someone around with a stick to poke clear the grilles.

I like what the Dutch do to guard against intense storms flooding city streets. Towns compete in the Tegelwippen, an annual “tile-whipping” contest to see who can rip up the most paving slabs from gardens and public spaces, allowing rainwater to soak into the ground rather than disappear down drains — and, all too often, into the sea. In Britain, heavy rain can overwhelm sewage systems, sending effluent into our rivers and on to our beaches.

Some local authorities, such as Gloucestershire County Council, are telling people to “Leaf It Out” — encouraging residents to unblock drain grilles themselves. Next time I walk down my lane, I’ll take a stick and have a poke around. Better that than waiting for the local council to get round to it.

And if poking a stick down a blocked drain makes a difference, I might sleep a little better at night.