Flash flood warnings for southern England

Steven Morris in the Guardian (UK): Householders and business owners are being warned about flash flooding in parts of England as hundreds of people continued to mop up following the recent deluge. The number of flood warnings, which signal that flooding is expected and ordering people to take immediate action, rose to five overnight. All of the warnings concerned riverside areas in the south-east, including the River Ouzel in Bedfordshire.

More than 40 flood alerts – which mean that flooding is possible – were issued by the Environment Agency, again mainly for the south-east but also for East Anglia, the Midlands, the north-east and south-west. Up to 65mm of rain has fallen within 24 hours, more than southern England's average rainfall for the whole of June, flooding homes and businesses, closing schools and disrupting transport.

On Tuesday morning, four schools in West Sussex, which bore the brunt of the bad weather in England, were closed. A number of A-roads in the region were closed while two lanes of the M3 were shut.

A severe weather warning issued by the Met Office for London, the south-east, east and south-west of England and Wales remained in force. There is no end in sight to the bad weather in some parts of the country, with another area of low pressure bringing in more rainclouds expected later in the week....

Sunset over the flood waters on the Ouse Washes, December 2009, shot by Richard Humphrey, Wikimedia Commons via Geograph UK, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license