Storm Babet came from the other way, says Suffolk MP

Speaking to the House of Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, she suggested the damage done by Storm Babet was harder to predict because rain came in from the wrong way!

Ms Coffey told MPs a “rapid review” would be conducted into what happened.

Giving evidence, she said: “One of the things that happened particularly with Storm Babet is that we are very good, with the Met Office and the Environment Agency’s flood forecasting (centre), at predicting weather normally because most of our rain tends to come in from the west. We’ve got that pretty much down to a fine art.” She then added: “This was rain coming from the other way and we don’t have quite as much experience on that, therefore our accuracy of predicting where such heavy rain would fall was not to the same degree as if it had been.”

Rain coming from the other way! Now I’ve heard of the wrong kind of snow and thought that was ridiculous but the rain coming in the wrong direction, that’s a new one on me.

The simple fact is in Suffolk we weren’t warned in the way part of Scotland was and we were ill prepared for the deluge.

As the floodwaters rose, we saw the best of Suffolk people, offering everything from lifts in tractors to putting strangers up for the night. Once more Team Suffolk comes to the rescue.

With experts predicting more extreme weather events could we be more prepared? Lots of the flooding came from rainwater washing off the fields. Could our farmers dig out and maintain large ditches around their fields? I know some do and it used to happen a lot in the past. With water in short supply (I can see the irony in this) could landowners create ponds and reservoirs to capture the rainfall when it does come? Back in the day, Suffolk used to have hundreds of ponds for this very reason. We need to capture and store as much rainwater as we can, and the ponds would be good for wildlife.

We must also stop trying to concrete over everything. With many front gardens paved over, mine included, the rainwater isn’t soaked up and we rely on archaic drainage systems to try and cope. Come on Anglian Water spend some money on that instead of unnecessary adverts on the TV!

Let’s see Suffolk County Council work harder to fix areas that regularly flood and clean out the drains. I genuinely can’t remember seeing anyone do that for decades. Growing up I’d often see the lorries coming around to make sure everything was ok. That was in the days when we maintained things and didn’t wait until there was a problem.

Are we maintaining our rivers or are they too clogged up for the floodwater to run easily along them? The Environment Agency I’m sure, like our councils, would want to do more but is strapped for cash.

We mustn’t just write this off as a one off, we should all do what we can to stop this kind of flooding happening in the future.

Oh, and in case the rain comes from the wrong way again perhaps Ms Coffey could look at finding ways of seeing it coming!