Latest / Mark and Pete / Why is Britain the Wettest Ever?
Transcript
- 0:05Why is Britain the wettest ever? Welcome to Mark and Pete and we
- 0:11ask the question. With the fields being soggy and
- 0:14the wellies weary, what's going on with Cornish Weller weather
- 0:19and elsewhere? Now let's listen to Here is our
- 0:22first thought. Complete wash out when fields
- 0:28are flooded and foggy and the ground is basically boggy from
- 0:32raining cats and dogs with leaping frogs, it's safe to say
- 0:36it's soggy. Yes, it has been extremely soggy
- 0:40from the small Cornish village of Cardenum.
- 0:44The rain so far this year really has been relentless.
- 0:47Now, according to the Met Office, it has rained there
- 0:50every day for the last 50 days and counting.
- 0:54In fact, the last dry day residents experience was back in
- 0:58the 30th of December of 2025. They have received an
- 1:02extraordinary amount of rainfall.
- 1:04But it doesn't end there. There are regions all around the
- 1:09United Kingdom, from Wales to Scotland to Northern Ireland and
- 1:13much further. Mr. Pete, I know that you're
- 1:16sitting there in a little puddle with your weathers.
- 1:20What on earth is going on with Britain's weather?
- 1:23Yeah, what on earth indeed It's it's one disaster another not
- 1:27long ago. I'm old enough to remember last
- 1:30year was it when it was supposed to be really, really dry.
- 1:33I know it's the wettest other and people talking about global
- 1:39warming and there's there's theories that the aeroplanes
- 1:44overhead might be trying to use chemtrails to seed clouds and
- 1:49what what there's so much panic about the weather.
- 1:54And yet let's let me be well, let me give you a Bible reading.
- 1:58This is from Ecclesiastes verse one, the sign of verse 6.
- 2:03It says this and I'll come out. It says the wind goes towards
- 2:06the north and turns around to the South and all the rivers run
- 2:10into the sea. And yet the sea is not full.
- 2:15Even in those days, back in the the Old Testament times, people
- 2:19were panicking about the weather.
- 2:21And in God's words, it says, yeah, don't worry about it.
- 2:24And I think this is the point that I would like to make about
- 2:28this. What's going on?
- 2:29Well, it's weather. It's not the end of the world.
- 2:34Well. Is it because ironically, the
- 2:37infrastructure in Britain has been a question here.
- 2:40Now, this is not unique. We've seen many villages swept
- 2:45away bridges, you know, infrastructure all floating down
- 2:51the rivers and into many other strange places.
- 2:54Now, what's interesting here is, is that this seems to be
- 2:57happening on a regular basis. Now, I, I, I will say that I
- 3:03know that certain communities have had investment from the
- 3:06government to try and bolster their, you know, their, their
- 3:11ability to be able to cope with them heavy rainfall.
- 3:15But what is interesting is, is the fact that we're seeing at
- 3:18the moment, according to the Meteorological Department, the
- 3:20wettest on record. It's really the fact that when
- 3:24you go from very dry periods to very wet periods, of course, it
- 3:28takes a long time to get into the water table.
- 3:30So this is one of the, the, the challenges, Umm, but I, are we
- 3:34really just seeing that this is now the normal pattern we're
- 3:37going to go from, you know, lengthy periods of dry spells
- 3:41and lengthy periods of wet spells.
- 3:43So really what that means is is that, umm, you know, whether you
- 3:47are out and about and then you're trying to sort of
- 3:50maintain your garden, which is a tricky, tricky one for for many
- 3:53people at the moment. I'm sure there are loads of our
- 3:55listeners thinking, what do I do all, all my flower beds are too
- 3:59soggy, Umm, to then suddenly finding that there there's just
- 4:03not a drop of water anywhere to, to sort of maintain them.
- 4:08Is this now the, the norm, the extreme weathers that we're
- 4:11going to get? Because I don't remember it
- 4:13being quite so extreme consistently.
- 4:17Well, here's the thing. I humans memory of things like
- 4:23the weather is very selective and you know, we, we always
- 4:27seems to think it whence something has just happened.
- 4:30And it is annoying when there's too much rain.
- 4:32It can be very bad. And it can if, if, if the plants
- 4:36get too soggy, it can actually ruin crops.
- 4:38You know, you don't always need rain, at least not on that
- 4:40level, unless you've got a Paddy field.
- 4:43So yeah, yeah, it can be serious.
- 4:45But you then think, oh, this is the worst ever.
- 4:47And then, but what about the bad winters of the 1970s?
- 4:50You know, we have selective and short memory.
- 4:53So I'm not sure of that, Mister Mark.
- 4:56And I think maybe this is a flash in the pan, shall we say.
- 5:00I think that I think I agree with the writer of Ecclesiastes.
- 5:04Yes, there's loads of rain and the filling the rivers, the
- 5:07rivers run into the sea, but the sea isn't full.
- 5:09So don't don't worry about it. I, I think, well, the lesson is
- 5:14that we need to get a better flood management infrastructure
- 5:18and we need to have better planning for times of drought as
- 5:21well. Right, So what you're saying is
- 5:23we don't need to start building an arc.
- 5:25Is that probably 1 of? Your I would say I would say
- 5:31don't start building the arc just yet.
- 5:33Save that for when it's the end of the world.
- 5:36But as to when that is, well, you have to wait for the Mark
- 5:38and PC episode that introduces it.