Abstract
AbstractWe analyse chronologies of historical flash floods derived from searches of newspaper archives and other sources commencing before 1800 and recent gauged rainfall and stream flow data. Five key examples are chosen to illustrate specific features of flash floods. Pluvial flash floods arise from rainfall before it reaches a watercourse and may cause severe flooding of land and properties far from rivers. River flash floods, like pluvial floods, have the characteristic of rapid speed of response, a principal source of risk to life. Intense rainfall can generate ‘walls of water’ in river courses which can propagate long distances downstream and steepen, without upstream structural failure. Steeply rising wavefronts more commonly occur on steep upland catchments but, where intensities of extreme short period rainfall are sufficient, such wavefronts can also occur on lowland catchments. A definition of flash floods from intense rainfall, relevant to British landscape and climate, is proposed.
Highlights
Interest in flash floods has been stimulated in Britain by the occurrence, in the last decade, of events of unusual severity caused by short period intense rainfall on small catchments
Notable were the flood on the River Rye at Helmsley1 in North Yorkshire in 2005 (Wass et al, 2008) and at Boscastle2 in 2004 (HR Wallingford, 2005) (Figure 1)
We examine the characteristics of historical and recent flash floods in an attempt to draw general conclusions on the meteorological conditions under which flash floods are generated, the speed of onset of the flood, variations in catchment vulnerability and the risks to life associated with such events
Summary
Interest in flash floods has been stimulated in Britain by the occurrence, in the last decade, of events of unusual severity caused by short period intense rainfall on small catchments. Notable were the flood on the River Rye at Helmsley in North Yorkshire in 2005 (Wass et al, 2008) and at Boscastle in 2004 (HR Wallingford, 2005) (Figure 1). Both floods caused extensive damage and destruction no lives were lost. Historical floods in cities, towns or villages have caused multiple fatalities. Numerous studies have been made of individual flash floods in southern Europe, mainly defined by extreme rainfall totals and peak discharges
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