{"id":1669,"date":"2026-09-11T12:31:08","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T12:31:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/2026\/09\/11\/floods-and-droughts-are-both-signs-of-water-insecurity-they-show-up-in-these-four-places\/"},"modified":"2026-09-11T12:31:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-11T12:31:08","slug":"floods-and-droughts-are-both-signs-of-water-insecurity-they-show-up-in-these-four-places","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/2026\/09\/11\/floods-and-droughts-are-both-signs-of-water-insecurity-they-show-up-in-these-four-places\/","title":{"rendered":"Floods and droughts are both signs of water insecurity \u2013 they show up in these four places"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/span> Alasdair Jones\/Shutterstock<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After the UK\u2019s hottest ever summer on record, when much of the country has experienced a fraction of its normal levels of rain, many regions continue to be in drought. This water crisis<\/a> has led to parched reservoirs and widespread hosepipe bans. Yet early autumn heat has been making way for some serious downpours<\/a>. <\/p>\n

While the country desperately needs rain to break the drought, we are also facing a future where warmer, wetter winters are putting millions more people, homes and infrastructure in the way of potentially damaging floods.<\/p>\n

Have we got too much, or too little water?<\/p>\n

Drought and flooding are not opposite emergencies. They are two consequences of an imperfect and misunderstood water<\/a> system. By looking at four places where our lives directly intersect with water, it\u2019s possible to see the impacts of too much, or too little, almost anywhere you look. <\/p>\n

1. The kitchen tap<\/h2>\n

When you want a cup of tea, you don\u2019t stick the kettle out the window and wait for a passing shower. Instead clean water appears when you turn on the tap over your kitchen sink. A modern-day miracle? Behind your tap lies a long chain running many miles, through networks of pipes, storage tanks, pumps and reservoirs. <\/p>\n

This network of human-harnessed water stores combined with slow-moving natural groundwater stores below our feet all buffer us against a climate that delivers rain unevenly.<\/p>\n

\n \"silver<\/a>
\n So much happens to transport and treat drinking water before it reaches the kitchen tap.<\/span>
\n Tommy Larey\/Shutterstock<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Our water system has been built to shed much of the surplus rather than keep it. We allow a wet winter to rush away, then ration what remains through a dry summer. If we held more of it back, whether in our homes and gardens, in storage tanks, green roofs and reservoirs, we could ease the flood and the shortage together.<\/p>\n

2. The soil<\/h2>\n

The soil is by far our biggest water reservoir. Healthy soil<\/a> behaves like a sponge, full of air pockets that absorb the rain, then slowly let it go. Compacted, baked-dry soil behaves differently. It can\u2019t soak in water, so rainfall pools on the surface or quickly runs off slopes.<\/p>\n

A long, dry summer doesn\u2019t mean winter floods are more likely. While hard dry ground can cause a summer storm to create a sudden flash floods, that effect is short-lived. Dry soil is empty soil, and is ready to take water in once it gets wet and becomes primed to absorb more. Winter flooding tends to occur when the ground is already saturated, so fresh rain runs off into rivers that are rising anyway.<\/p>\n

Soil plays a crucial role in our food supply. Waterlogged or parched soils lead to lower yields, pushing prices up in the shops. When farmers carefully manage water on their land \u2013 by holding water back when there is too much while using it sparingly when there is too little \u2013 the risk of droughts and flooding is reduced.<\/p>\n

\n \"autumn<\/a>
\n Llyn Clywedog reservoir and dam in Wales.<\/span>
\n Ian Dewar Photography\/Shutterstock<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

3. The drain<\/h2>\n

In the UK, Victorian sewers and drains were designed to take water away from our homes as fast as possible. That\u2019s great for preventing a cholera outbreak, but it makes urban landscapes more prone to floods, and thirstier in droughts. <\/p>\n

When a storm settles over a city, if the drains fill up, the streets will flood. Usually almost none of that water is kept for the dry spell that may grip the same region. That\u2019s how we can find ourselves under a hosepipe ban and a flood warning at the same time.<\/p>\n

The remedy is to make cities porous again, separating systems for sewage and rainfall in some cases, and making permeable paving, rain gardens and space for water to gather rather than rush away.<\/p>\n

\n

\n
\n
\n Read more:
\n A \u2018sponge city\u2019 may be your home in 2050<\/a>
\n <\/strong>
\n <\/em>\n<\/p>\n

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4. The river<\/h2>\n

A river is not just the water you can see. It\u2019s an entire catchment, containing every raindrop that has landed within it and worked its way down via different paths.<\/p>\n

One drop runs straight off the ground into a river channel, then reaches the sea within hours. Another drop sinks into the soil, where it is pulled into a plant and breathed back out in the atmosphere, within weeks. A third raindrop seeps deep into the rock, where it may stay slowly moving between layers before it finally surfaces, years later.<\/p>\n

Drought is dictated by those slow movements of water, feeding deep stores that a long period with low rainfall quietly empties. Flooding is a function of the faster flows, with a single storm able to inundate roads or houses, or make a river spread out over the land, whatever is happening deeper down.<\/p>\n

One water system has parts moving at different speeds. When our farms, cities or infrastructure are in the way, it can spell trouble. The UK\u2019s climate is swinging more violently between too much water and too little. <\/p>\n

To adapt to this reality and ensure our water security, we need solutions that involve nature to capture water where it falls and hold it back rather than let it rush off. Restored wetlands, leaky dams, bendier rivers and floodplain storage all slow water down alongside concrete barriers and walls. This reduces the flood peak downstream, while keeping more in the system for the months when water is scarce again.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Hannah Cloke advises the Environment Agency, the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts, the Copernicus Emergency Management Service, local and national governments and humanitarian agencies on the forecasting and warning of natural hazards. She is a fellow of the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts. Her research is funded by the UKRI Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council, the UKRI Natural Environment Research Council, the European Commission and the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alasdair Jones\/Shutterstock After the UK\u2019s hottest ever summer on record, when much of the country has experienced a fraction of its normal levels of rain, many regions continue to be in drought. This water crisis has led to parched reservoirs and widespread hosepipe bans. Yet early autumn heat has been making way for some serious […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1669\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}