Category Archives: Risk communication
Royal Meteorology Society Award for the Scottish Flood Forecasting Service
Scientists from Met Office and SEPA working within the forecasting service have been recognised at the Royal Meteorological Society Awards for their work on the ‘Surface Water Flood forecasting in Urban Communities’ project. They, along with their colleagues from The … Continue reading
Storm Frank On Tour
Operationally it has been a fairly quiet last 12 months or so for the forecasting service. The interest in the events of winter 2015-16 still continues, however, particularly the floods resulting from Storm Frank at the very end of 2015. … Continue reading
High Impact Weather and Climate Conference
High Impact Weather and Climate was the subject of the conference held by Royal Meteorological Society and National Centre for Atmospheric Science at the University of Manchester last week. Members of the forecasting service attended, along with many colleagues from … Continue reading
Storm Frank-Short Range Forecast Performance
On the 30th December, 2015, new maximum peak levels were recorded on the Rivers Cree, Dee and upper Tweed due to rainfall which fell overnight from the 29th to the 30th December associated with Storm Frank; an unusually deep area … Continue reading
Storm Frank – how was the medium range flood guidance?
The rainfall associated with Storm Frank on 30 December 2015 caused some of the most severe flooding seen in Scotland for many years, particularly along the river Dee in Aberdeenshire and the rivers Cree and Nith in Dumfries and Galloway, … Continue reading
The 2005 Teviot floods: then and now
As previously reported Storm Desmond caused severe flooding over the weekend of the 5th and 6th December in parts of the country including the Teviot Valley. The River Teviot in Hawick recorded its second highest river flow on record and … Continue reading
Decision making in times of uncertainty: the crying wolf
Nikéh Booister presents the second and final part of this series on decision making in times of uncertainty. “The forecaster has to be the expert on knowing what uncertainties are and where they come from as we could have read … Continue reading
Decision making in times of uncertainty: the forecaster
In a two-part feature, we cover various roles involved in decision making at times of uncertainty. The first is provided by Paul Ryles, Senior Scientist and operational flood forecaster at SEPA. “Flood prediction is a science, especially in challenging situations such … Continue reading
Flood forecasting: current challenges and future aspirations
How can flood forecasting best rise to the challenges and opportunities that communities and partners face; at what point does effort in flood forecasting become less effective than local adaptation; and what are the aspirations and capability of our future … Continue reading
Heavy Rainfall Alerts – latest advances
In order to provide probabilistic forecasts of flooding from surface water the forecasting service has been using a Heavy Rainfall Alert (HRA) tool since 2013, as discussed in a previous article. The tool consists of a spreadsheet that is updated … Continue reading
Scottish Flood Forecasting Service 