Current status as of 13:00 on 26 January 2016
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Heavy and persistent rain is forecast
The Met Office has issued yellow severe weather
warnings for rain across the South West for today, Tuesday 26 January
and tomorrow, Wednesday 27 January 2016 as Storm Jonas passes over the
UK. The rain will be accompanied by gales with
the risk of severe gales on exposed hills and coasts for a time.
Across our Wessex Area we are expecting persistent rainfall between Tuesday afternoon and early morning on Thursday. During this time we could see rainfall totals across Wessex of between 25 and 50 mm. High ground on Exmoor could see up to 60mm of rain. This may well lead to some localised flooding, although we do not anticipate flooding of any properties in the Somerset Levels and Moors.
What we are doing
Our incident rooms in Bridgwater and Blandford are
now open and will stay open 24hours a day throughout this period of bad
weather. We are continuing to monitor the weather forecast and the
situation on the ground, including continual monitoring
of river and groundwater levels. We will issue flood alerts and flood
warnings as appropriate.
We are working with local authorities and other
professional partners to brief them on the likely consequences of any
possible flooding to help everyone plan for this and provide a joined up
response.
We have over 50 members of staff out and about
checking rivers and trash screens to clear any blockages and we will be
operating our flood risk management assets as necessary. We are also
making sure staff will be available to support
any incident as it develops.
If you are concerned please:
•
Call Floodline on 0345 988 1188 for updates on flooding, to sign up for free flood warnings or to report flooding.
•
Sign up for flood warnings at
www.gov.uk/sign-up-for-flood-warnings
•
Visit the Environment Agency website
www.gov.uk/environment-agency which contains information on current river levels and flooding
•
Follow us on Twitter
https://twitter.com/EnvAgencySW
•
Visit our facebook page
https://www.facebook.com/environmentagencywessex
