Year 8 Weather assessment
How do people respond to storms?
The government employs thousands of people to
predict weather and to manage the impacts of bad
weather. The Meteorological Office (Met Office for
short, right) uses state of the art computers to predict
the weather as accurately as possible. Occasionally
they don’t get it right! You see their predictions on
weather forecasts on television, on the internet and in
newspapers.
RESOURCE SHEET
The Environment Agency then comes up with
responses to bad weather – this might be alerting
people in certain regions through the radio or TV
news. It might involve roads being shut, or it might be
in helping other organisations coordinate their
response – such as the emergency services or local
councils. Often they will advise people to stay at home
in times of bad weather – certainly to make only
essential journeys (this is what happened in the snow
week of February 2009).
The emergency services are put on high alert when
bad weather is predicted – a terrible storm like in
January 2007 will mean many calls for ambulances
for the injured, and to the fire service to rescue people
and put out electrical fires (right, below). Occasionally,
the army are called in to rescue people, or like in the
summer of 2007 when major floods contaminated the
water system, distribute clean water.
People often use sandbags to protect their properties,
and move all their valuables and furniture to a first
floor to avoid flood damage. On rare occasions,
people are evacuated from their homes. Terrible
storms can bring wind damage as well. People in
Sheffield had to spend up to a week in a temporary
shelter because of the flood damage to their houses:
some have still not been able to return home.