On October 26, a yellow weather warning issued by the Met Office began at Midday and covered areas including Aberdeenshire and Aberdeen City, Dundee and Stirling. Heavy rain is expected for these areas leaving communities at risk of flooding of properties, road closures, cancellations to transport services, and danger to life.
ScotRail, due to the weather warning, announced there would be no direct services between the central belt and Aberdeen and Inverness until Sunday.
This new yellow warning comes in the wake of Storm Babet, which caused severe weather damage, flooding communities across the country and claiming the lives of three people in Scotland.
STV weather presenter Philip Petrie told STV News: “On Wednesday, we’ve had no more than around 5/6mm – but any rain in the north east is not really welcome after the awful impacts and devastation caused by Storm Babet.”
“The yellow warning from the Met Office has been issued with the consideration in mind that parts of Aberdeenshire, Angus, Dundee and Perth and Kinross have already seen such high levels of rainfall, flooding and the ground is already highly saturated here.”
“The rain will be less heavy than last week, but we are likely to see more flooding in places because of the saturated ground.”
Areas affected by the latest weather warning have already suffered hugely from the effects of Storm Babet.
Brechin, in Angus, was one of the worst affected communities by the storm. A GoFundMe page was set up by local charity the Brechin Buccaneers to help local residents. The charity set a target of £50,000 and have so far raised over forty thousand, with donors being urged to help cover the cost of insurance for families left homeless during a cost-of-living crisis.
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On their GoFundMe page, the charity says:
“The horrific levels of flooding we have just seen will have a huge impact upon many of our lives. When we factor in the cost of living rises we have already witnessed and the costs of insurance, we are faced with the tragic fact that many simply cannot afford to pay for insurance.”
The impact of Storm Babet emphasises the threat extreme weather poses to Scotland’s infrastructure.
In 2020, a report by the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) Scotland cautioned that rising temperatures and sea levels and heavier rainfall are all impacting Scotland’s infrastructure.
ICE Scotland director, Hannah Smith, told The Herald: “Climate change is already straining Scotland’s existing infrastructure, much of which wasn’t built to withstand the weather conditions increasingly being seen.”
The ICE, in addition, said: “Without urgent action we risk a series of infrastructure failures that would hurt the economy, be costly to resolve, and threaten the safety and wellbeing of infrastructure users.
“We must act quickly to adapt and retrofit our infrastructure so it is resilient to these impacts and can continue to perform. We must make it climate ready.”
“Scotland Aberdeen _DSC10200” by youngrobv is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.