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Fierce debates as Britain sinks further underwater

12 February 2014 21:23 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA.The River Thames has burst its banks, rail lines have been washed away, villages have been turned into islands and soldiers are out on the front lines filling sandbags. As residents battled to save their homes — and British politicians battled one another — yet another storm hit the U.K on Wednesday, pummeling the west coast with torrential rain and wind gusts up to 106 mph (170 kph), APA reports quoting Associated Press.

Here's a look at the nation's exceptionally wet and wild weather.

WHAT CAUSED THE FLOODS?

Rain, rain and more rain. England has had its wettest January since records began almost 250 years ago. Since December, the country has been lashed by waves of wind and rain connected to a faster-than-usual jet stream, which flows from west to east across the Atlantic. Britain's weather agency, the Met Office, says "there's no definitive answer" on the role played by climate change in the recent weather. But it says there's "an increasing body of evidence that shows that extreme daily rainfall rates are becoming more intense" — likely due to a warming world.

About 5,800 properties have flooded since December along England's southwest coast, the low-lying Somerset Levels and the Thames Valley west of London, where several riverside villages and hundreds of pricey properties were swamped this week as the river burst its banks. The Severn and Wye rivers in western England are also on flood alert. On the Levels, which often flood, thousands of acres (hectares) of farmland have been under water since the beginning of January, with some villages accessible only by boat or emergency vehicles.

Still, it's not as bad as summer storms in 2007 that flooded more than 50,000 homes and left a dozen people dead.