Category Archives: Surface Water
Surface water flood forecasting: where next?
In August this year, SEPA published its new Flood Warning Development Framework. The framework defines the direction of travel for flood forecasting and warning services in Scotland with the aims to maintain and improve existing, and deliver new, operational flood … Continue reading
Exploring an impact-based approach to flood forecasting
As we’ve previously reported on here, many parts of the North and West Highlands of Scotland can be spared major flooding impacts even when significant rainfall (100 to 200 mm) can fall. In October 2018, although the town of Oban … Continue reading
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
Review of 2017-18 EFAS Messages
As reported in the article on the 13th annual meeting of the European Flood Awareness System partners, SEPA and the forecasting service are part of this international forecasting initiative, and receive notifications when flooding is expected. As part of our … 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
Surface Water Flooding in Aberdeen
As noted in previous articles surface water flooding can be challenging to forecast. On Tuesday 7th July a period of intense rainfall over Aberdeen and the surrounding area led to significant surface water flooding. The forecasting service was able to … Continue reading
#FRMis10: Future flood risk management strategies
When the inaugural SNIFFER Flood Risk Management conference was convened in 2005 many of the current approaches to flood risk management were very much in their infancy – if at all conceived. 10 years on and the ‘FRMis10’ conference agenda– … Continue reading
Surface water flood forecasting during the Commonwealth Games
We are pleased to report that the Glasgow surface water flood forecasting model ran successfully during the Commonwealth Games and throughout the summer. Luckily the weather during the Games was largely fine however there were occasions when the additional surface … Continue reading
Operational surface water flood forecasting model for Glasgow now live
After 18 months of hard work from ourselves, CEH Wallingford, Deltares, Met Office and the James Hutton Institute, our Glasgow surface water flood forecasting model is now operational (previous updates available here and here). We believe this is the UK’s … Continue reading
Staying alert in rain or shine
Last summer our Met Office coordinator Pete Buchanan produced a couple of articles about surface water flooding. In the second article he explained how our Heavy Rainfall Alert (HRA) Tool works. Here he gives us an update on further development of … Continue reading
Scottish Flood Forecasting Service 