Gales and storms to make it wettest ever Christmas
BRITAIN is on course for its wettest Christmas on record, with heavy rain and gale-force winds set to batter the country.
Storms will sweep across Britain on Christmas Eve, gathering pace on Christmas Day itself, say forecasters.
Jonathan Powell, senior forecaster at Positive Weather Solutions, last night warned that the UK faced “a festive nightmare”.
The prediction follows the deaths of two people at the weekend after the South-west was hit by torrential downpours and flash floods.
The body of widower Henry Collier, 86, was found floating near his car in Somerset on Saturday evening.
Yesterday the Rev David Jasper, of the Church of St Peter and St Paul, in South Petherton, near Yeovil, said Mr Collier, who still worked as a gardener, was “a lovely, lovely man” who never missed a church service.
“Everyone who knew him would say he was a good, kind man who lived for his church and for his people.
A 22-year-old woman also died on Saturday, after her car crashed off the road during a heavy downpour in Dorset.
Devon and Somerset saw the worst of the weekend weather with 18 inches of rain but there were flooding incidents across Britain. Fire crews in Crawley, West Sussex, were forced to evacuate 47 pensioners from Gables Nursing Home on Saturday after a burst riverbank sent water gushing through the building. A further 30 people were rescued from their homes and cars.
There was some respite yesterday, with the rain easing across most of the country, but Mr Powell said the drier weather would not last. “On Christmas Day there will be stormy conditions across the South, the West, Wales, Scotland and the Midlands with a lot of heavy rain and very strong winds,” he said. “It is likely that this could be the wettest Christmas on record.”
The heavy rain would continue into the new year, meaning it could also be “the wettest festive week, between Christmas and New Year, that the country has ever seen”.
The wettest December in Britain on record was in 1929, when more than 212mm of rain fell. This year, according to Mr Powell, there will also be gales of around 35mph.
He said: “This will have all the characteristics of a storm and be very powerful. It will cause havoc.”
• More than one million Americans were without power yesterday after one of the worst ice storms in a decade. Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine and New York have all declared full or partial states of emergency.
