HighPressure

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In North West Kent we have just measured our hghest rainfall rate to date : 195.2mm / 20:29

I wonder if the aurora is related to Sun Dogs? My son took these images today in South London :

Latest pic, still snowing :

Took this a few mins ago, Downs NW Kent :

Snowing quite haevy here on the downs, it seems to be turning back into snow along the M25 Surrey / Kent

I think the problem with comparing 1976 to this year is that we know how 1976 ended, the rains came. We simply don't have a crystal ball to see how this autumn and winter will play out.

I seem to remember they bought in a genuine Indian Witch Doctor to do a 'Rain Dance' in 1976, don't think it worked but maybe worth another shot this time ?

Hi Nick, here is an exert from the email I sent my MP yesterday, I worked for 20yrs in the water industry (5yrs for SES and 15yrs for Thames) from the late 80s to the late noughties. I worked throughout the privatisation period, and was part of many changes and improvements made "My experience is that the industry has been wholly dishonest since @1995 when all obvious savings were exhausted. The industry plays cat and mouse with the regulator, choosing to pay fines because it is cheaper than providing long term solutions. Risk assessments are carried out on 1 in 5 or 1 in 10yr drought events, so the companies know that they need to plan for these, but they don't. Maintenance procedures and standby capacity has been consistently reduced for cost saving purposes. Companies such as Thames Water report their own figures such as leakage to OFWAT and they are routinely misrepresented. This manipulation was so bad at Thames that we needed to create an entirely different system for calculating London's demand as the official system was rigged to the extent it did not represent the true numbers. In truth some of the smaller companies such as SES Water are a lot more honest as these were never part of the privatization process as they have always been private companies." You may also be interested to know that there has always been private water companies in the UK, here is a list of them: Affinity Water Bournemouth Water Bristol Water Cambridge Water Company Cholderton and District Water Company Essex and Suffolk Water Hartlepool Water Portsmouth Water SES Water South East Water South Staffordshire Water

The main that burst was probably the one we knew as the East London 36inch, it is a very old main and has burst many times. The biggest clue is the time it went @7am just before demand really gets going the time of day when pressures in the network are around their highest. Due to what I suspect is and has been high demand the overnight window for refilling reservoirs is just a few hours, which means you have to take the pressures to their limits, and accept the associated risks.

Anyway got plenty of stuff still growing in my Kent garden :

A couple of things to note today, SES water don't plan to introduce a hose pipe ban, which is interesting that they rely primarily on ground water via boreholes and wells, it seems to suggest that groundwater levels must be reasonable. The other thing I have leant today is that the great Thames Water desalination plant at Beckon opened just after I left, is not in operation and will not be used in the event of a drought order. This is because it doesn't actually work properly, engineers forgot to factor in that salt levels rise and fall during the day making the plant completely unreliable, and unable to yield anywhere near the 150Mld promised. I can only continue to hope that companies like Thames are exposed for the shambolic way they run our water supplies. Money is that matters to them!

The point being is that our island is not short of water and engineering wise the solutions are quite simple. Given that 10s of billions of pounds has been taken in profits since privatisation, I do not think it unreasonable that these companies should be made to put supplying their product at the top of their list. During my time in the water industry, I even discussed the plausibility of powdered water, I kid you not, dry water in the form of powder exists

Couple of things, there is at least one desalination plant in the UK, Thames Water were building one at Beckon on the north bank of the Thames when I left. It using a desalination technique known about since the 1st book on water treatment called Reverse Osmosis. I understand the plant cost @£250m and can produce @140-150Mld, and it cost about double that of standard water treatment, but a lot cheaper than other methods. The Chinese have a huge transfer scheme underway, it just shows what can be down if the will is there : The South-North Water Transfer Project in China - Internet Geography WWW.INTERNETGEOGRAPHY.NET The South-North Water Transfer Project in China. Find out about the main features of the project along wit its advantages and disadvantages.

At the risk of boring everyone, September / October are key months, if they are dry, not only do the reservoirs keep dropping but they become difficult to refill. One thing they found out in 1976 (well before my time), is that you cannot just refill a clay core reservoir as fast as you like. Clay as you know dries out and we see those famous cracked ground photos as in this thread. If you refill too quickly the clay does not have time to gain moisture, so the water comes out the cracks and runs down the outside of the banks, and can undermine structural integrity. Each reservoir has a maximum daily refill rate which we used to calculate each morning before setting the abstraction regime, its only cm's per day. If you start low you have a risk of going into the following summer without maximum storage, and the cycle repeats...

Unless we get steady and persistent rain in August, any rain is likely to have no real direct influence on the water supply situation. Factors that do have an impact, last week of July and first couple of August see reduced demand in urban areas up to 10% in London as so many people are away and businesses are closed. Cloud and cooler temperatures will also help reduce demand, people do not water their gardens if it looks like its going to rain. A deluge of rain is often counterproductive especially after a prolonged dry spell. The ground is hard so any rain which does not evaporate becomes runoff into the rivers, that will wash all those gathered pollutants and organic materials straight into the river. That causes oxygen depletion, kills the fish and can actually stop any abstraction hat was running. They end up having to get this chap out :

Although I have been to Farmoor, and it is a Thames Water reservoir, the part of the Thames Valley controlled by Thames water in the Oxfordshire region is not connected to the London region so I don't have much personal experience of running that system. What I can say is that Farmoor is of similar construction to those near Heathrow and is filled from Thames abstraction again in a similar fashion. I can't speak for the hydraulics of the system itself. My experience comes initially from a tiny water company called Sutton & District Water which was all boreholes/wells and is now part of Surrey Water. The majority of my experience comes from being a senior controller for London's water supply for 15yrs. I have seen most things

As someone that was heavily involved in London's water supply for 2 decades (1990s-2000s) I have seen several drought or near drought situations. The first thing to say is that plenty of water flows down the Thames each winter to refill London's surface reservoirs to the maximum. The Thames supplies @70% of London's water, the Lea Valley @20% and the Kent Boreholes @10%. Thames Water are saying they supply 2100-2400 Mld (millions of ltrs per day), that is actually a reduction on the peak demands of the 1990's where I saw up to 2800 Mld, summer 1995 was one year I can remember. The boreholes in Kent produced @200-250Mld, so a very small amount in comparison. So why do we face possible drought restrictions now? The surface reservoirs were fall again this spring, containing @220,000 Million Ltrs, which in theory should equate to @100 days of London's supply needs without the need to abstract more from the River Lea or Thames. The problem is the system does not actually work, so despite the theory, there actually isn't 100 days supply, in fact no where near that. In reality 30 days is probably stretching it, before they are crying out to abstract, and during the summer that is not easy when you have 450Mld pumps and one of those can quite literately suck the Thames dry (It can't because it will conk out on low suction before that). Because most years it is possible to keep some abstraction going from the Thames and the Lea, the real situation isn't actually seen because the reservoirs can be kept above about 70%. Once the reservoirs dip below 70% you get problems, firstly with water quality, the more shallow the water is the more issues you get with algae, that causes blinding of primary filter beds which mean they need backwashing more often, and that reduces output from works. The next issue you find is that the system is gravity fed, so as you lose head you lose input rates, there are pumps but they cannot cope with anything close to even average demand. In short if London suffers water restrictions this summer, it will be entirely self inflicted, due to lack of infrastructure improvements and investment over many years. Despite the many risk assessments that have been stuffed under their doors or left on desks, Thames like many other water companies put the pursuit of profit first and only make minimum infrastructure changes when they get caught with their pants down.

I would be one of those I guess Seriously isn't those who challenge mainstream thinking that tend to make the discoveries, especially in science. The likes of Copernicus and Columbus. would have been considered completely mad if forum such as this existed back in their day. Science is to be challenged, if only to be proved wrong.