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Kasumi-tei: how Japan built levees with gaps in them on purpose, and why it stopped

An open levee is a flood embankment built in overlapping segments with deliberate gaps left between them, so floodwater can spread sideways onto farmland as the river rises and drain back out through the same gaps as it falls. Japan…
Posted on 18th September, 2026
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The oldest drainage system in the world: who actually has the claim

A stone drainage system roughly 5,000 years old was reported at Liman Tepe on the Turkish Aegean coast on 14 September 2026, and the coverage reached, as it usually does, for the superlative. It should not have. There is no…
Posted on 14th September, 2026
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129 drains and half a metre of loam: how Machu Picchu handles two metres of rain a year

Machu Picchu takes close to two metres of rain a year on a granite ridge that falls away at roughly 50% either side, and it has stood there for around six centuries. The photograph everybody knows is the part above…
Posted on 11th September, 2026
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Medieval drainage: the moats, monks and great drains you can still go and see

Medieval drainage has a public-relations problem. The popular picture is a filthy street, a chamber pot tipped out of a window and a moat brimming with sewage. A thousand years of squalor, sitting neatly between the Romans and the Victorians.…
Posted on 8th September, 2026
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Glacier Collapse, Not a Glacial Lake Outburst Flood: What Happened in Nepal

At 08:37 on 26 August 2026, a mountainside in the Langtang Himal gave way. Seven minutes later a wall of rock, ice and liquefied sediment crossed the Nepal-China border twenty-two kilometres away, moving at close to 190 kilometres an hour.…
Posted on 2nd September, 2026
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The great floods of 1947: 690,000 acres under water, and what the record still doesn’t show

In March 1947, rapid snowmelt onto ground that had been frozen for six weeks produced the largest river flood England has seen in the last hundred years. At the peak, the Minister of Agriculture told the Commons, 690,000 acres were…
Posted on 13th March, 2026
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Nine hours of warning: the 1953 North Sea flood and the failure that killed 307 people

The 1953 North Sea flood killed 307 people in England on the night of Saturday 31 January and the morning of Sunday 1 February. It remains the deadliest natural disaster in modern British history. Sea defences failed in 1,200 separate…
Posted on 31st January, 2026
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Storm Chandra flooding hits UK weeks after Storm Goretti

Storm Chandra is causing widespread flooding across the UK and Ireland, marking the second major flooding event of 2026 before the end of January. Flooding and disruption have continued into Wednesday, with impacts persisting across several regions. The storm follows…
Posted on 28th January, 2026
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The Great Flood of 1968: what two floods taught UK flood risk practice

The Great Flood of 1968 is really two floods. In July, a single night of rain over the Mendips tore bridges out of the Chew Valley and killed seven people. Ten weeks later, in the middle of September, much of…
Posted on 14th September, 2023
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What to Do After a Flood: A UK Recovery Guide

Knowing what to do after a flood comes down to sequence. Make the building safe, record the damage for your insurer, get the water and silt out inside 24 to 48 hours, strip out and disinfect over the following weeks,…
Posted on 23rd August, 2019
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