Pickles

I would seriously consider moving everything I wanted out of the office there OON. Best of luck.

If this rain keeps up as it has for the last hour or so then there are going to be some considerable problems for a good many people.

I have given up setting the clocks now and will wait until tomorrow I hope so, sat in the traffic for 2.5 hours yesterday just to do 2 miles because of those people.

Just been out and I have never seen so much water on the roads, then went up on the Quantock hills and had to turn back at Crowcombe due to the snow on the road on the A358 (around 1"), our village is rapidly becoming an island in the snow and floods.

Been an accident on M5 southbound between j24/25 and northbound between j27/26, not to mention the A38 closed in Devon trapping (reportedly) 200 motorists in deep snow at Haldon Hill

Fine light snow just started falling here.

That's uncanny!!! I had a dream during the night about a bright meteor.

Was just wondering if it is possible to put something like an alert status indicator on the forum. I know it is already on the home page, but I would imagine others like myself have the forum home page as my bookmark and don't see the home page or the main site at all times. Perhaps if it were just a small box that was either red, yellow or green to indicate that there was any warnings in place.

Got quite a few swallows round here at the moment, had to rescue one the other week that had been caught in a strong gust of wind and ended up under the garden table.

They are probably Somerset ducks and don't like it because they can't swim/float

But how do you know this? Science fiction films have 99.9% of the time got in them exactly what you have described in your post. however science fiction is exactly what it is called, fiction. An alien presence would have to be much much further advanced than ourselves in terms of technology, because they would have been able to travel further than we can even see/hear with things like radio telescopes. Computers are far more intelligent than most humans when it comes down to speed of thinking and being able to calculate imputed commands, and technology is advancing on earth and without a doubt, computers will be thinking for themselves widespread in the foreseeable future, and they are getting smaller and smaller. what is to say human brains won't do the same in thousands of years, due to technology? What I am trying to say is, we all have this vision of how creatures from outer space will look like, but isn't that just stereotyping them. When we look at other planets outside our solar system, we look for the things we know, because we don't know about the things that we have not yet discovered to be on this planet, and certainly not on other planets or in other galaxies, therefore, we know a planet may have had water on it because we know what water is and what the signs are. Referring to P3's post, before we knew what DNA was, nobody went looking for it, because nobody knew it existed, so why should people look for other matter when they don't actually know it exists? An alien may come in a different form than an animal, who knows? We haven't seen one yet, as far as we know

How do we actually know what an alien life form looks like? If it is unknown to us then what do we look for? if they are an invisible being, you may have one on the chair next to you without you even knowing. As Snow Raven said, we only went into space 40ish years ago (and even when we did that and walked on the moon people said that it was a hoax), plus we are finding new species of animals and plants all the time which shows that we haven't really found out about our own planet fully yet so why do people assume we have found everything outside of our own atmosphere. Perhaps aliens a put off by coming to this planet because if they landed in England the first communication would be "DO YOU SPEAK ENGLISH"

Just think of the council profits in November.

Perhaps they have looked at the second photo and thought, "that river looks a bit dry with the boats on the ground, it must be a drought"

With the untreated sewage that is mixed in with the floodwater, wouldn't it make it more of a health risk to use it to flush toilets? Afterall, at least you know where your sewage has been, but other peoples may not be so safe. I understand it is not nice having number 2's lurking (or rather floating) about the toilet, but at least it is your own.

A little bit of concern in the local area BBC H&W especially with this current band of rain.

How do you prepare for unprecedented rainfall like we have had in this area, in unpredictable places, I know for a fact that on Friday the emergency services ran out of resources to help with rescues, but they did a fantastic job to save so many lives with the situation as it was, which I think shows formidable preperation for extreme situations. As for flood plains, again, this current situation is affecting areas not on flood plains, so I don't really think that building has caused this current situation, it is all down to having such a huge amount of rainfall.

Highways agency are putting signs all over the country saying that flooding is forecast between jct's 8-11 on the M5. Be careful if you go too far that you will be able to get back.

Yes it does

Just heard that flooding in the area east of Worcester has affected in excess of 30,000 premises

Evacuation ongoing in Tenbury Wells think this may have been a false alarm, not 100% sure though.

For true mobile internet, I use my mobile phone connected to my laptop with a T-mobile pay as you go sim in it. They charge £1 a day, with no limit on usage, check their T&C's though, but if you don't use it any day, then you won't get charged. When I was without broadband at the home, I ued it daily to connect with my desktop, and as I could JUST get a 3G signal at home, the speeds were as quick as slow broadband.

I understand you have had the RAF S&R helicopter about your area most of the evening.

Just been out to survey what has happened in the worcester area. The dual carriageway from Kidderminster to Worcester (A449) was closed by police due to flooding we tried to get to worcester along the smaller roads but all of these were blocked by floods so rejoined the A449 at Ombersley and I have never seen a sight like it, around 70-100 cars abandoned along the road, thankfully the floods had started to drain so decided to plough through as close to the offside edge as possible as I could see the top of the kerb. Went through to worcester and the racecourse and cricket ground are under water, we then went through the city and power was out in several places but we really wasn't expecting what we saw when we reached the M5 J7, cars were abandoned everywhere, and vehicles parked on the road round the junction, we went northbound which was clear, but southbound was stationary, a lot of vehicles had nobody in them, and nearly all the vehicles were in darkness, it was a very earie sight and it was amazing to think those cars had been there probably since this afternoon. On the way back we tried several roads but all these were flodded so had to go to J4 on the M5 and back from the north side of Kidderminster.

You are certainly correct there, there are at least 4 serious incidents taking place around Hereford/Worcestershire, a lot of problems are being caused by fire appliances and ambulances not being able to get to incidents due to floods and abandoned vehicles. Helicopters have been called to the Evesham area to help.