The threshold for yellow heavy rain warnings - and yes thanks for reminding me Freddie - warnings are issued for impacts and not thresholds these days - has now been reduced to such a level, that the Met Office may as well issue a blanket yellow warning for the whole of the UK if there's any kind of active weather system crossing the country.
I'm sure that the people of South Wales know what to do when driving in heavy rain - let's face it they have had years of practice at it.
I realise that the Met Office are just playing the 'health and safety - fear of litigation' game, but the whole country seems to me to be at serious risk of being mollycoddled to death.
Yes there should be warnings issued for heavy rain events that would result in flooding, but rainy days are just part of the fabric of everyday life on this sceptred isle, and this event wasn't one of them.
Talking of flooding, over 64 mm of rain fell on the 11th close to Dingwall, most of that during the late afternoon (
see my report). There was a yellow thunderstorm warning out for the north of Scotland for that day - but there were no thunderstorms - just torrential rain and flooding. The Met Office never updated their warning to amber or red, even though the 'wet desk' (if they still call it that) must have had full visibility of the SEPA (and EA) automatic rainfall network, as well as their own (the one that Julian is privy to but not members of the public).
I don't know if SEPA issue flood alerts for Scotland, but they must have sophisticated GIS systems that they feed the latest NWP mesoscale forecast and and observational data into that are able to predict when trouble is brewing for low lying places such as Dingwall. I wonder if and how SEPA and Highland Council would have reacted to the issuing of a red warning for heavy rain from the Met Office that afternoon?