Abstract
THE remarkable persistence of heavy rainfall during the closing months of 1935 has been the cause of much material damage and inconvenience to the inhabitants of low-lying districts and notably in the case of the Thames Valley, where extensive flooding has occurred, and the river has attained heights occasioning serious concern to the authorities Up to the end of November, the aggregate rainfall of 13-96 inches for the three autumn months exceeded all previous records of the Thames Conservancy Board for more than fifty years. On the last day of December, the aggregate for four months was touching 17 inches and the flow over Teddington Weir was at the rate of 6,500 million gallons per twenty-four hours, a thousand million gallons more than in mid-November, as reported in NATURE of November 23 (p. 826), and two thousand million gallons in excess of the ‘root figure’ of 4,500 million gallons, when the river is flowing bank high. At Lechlade and Radcot, where thousands of acres are under a foot of water, the river reached its highest level since the great floods of 1929. At Reading the stream was in many places a quarter of a mile wide. Flooded areas of equally considerable extent have been reported from various parts of the south and east of England? from Kent, Hampshire, Cambridgeshire, Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire, Worcestershire and the East Midlands. The infliction of widespread havoc of this kind once more emphasises the importance of the survey undertaken by the Inland Water Survey Committee of the Ministry of Health, the issue of the first annual report of which in the near future is awaited with much interest. Heavy rains and inundations are unfortunately not confined to Great Britain. From France, Switzerland and elsewhere come reports of gales and floods, and a recrudescence of the conditions described in NATURE of November 23. The Rivers Saone, Ardeche, Loire and Garonne are stated to be rising continuously, and in the Rhone Valley, Avignon is again threatened with submergence.
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Winter Floods. Nature 137, 25 (1936). https://doi.org/10.1038/137025b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/137025b0
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