Our tips these past few months have all seemed to concentrate on how wet it has been this summer. It has been a lot drier in the south recently, though still very wet in the north (August seeing as much as 150% of the average rainfall in southern and western Scotland and Northern Ireland) but we make no apologies for featuring this issue again: it is something we may well hear a lot more about this autumn. Evidently, according to Terry Marsh from the Centre of Ecology and Hydrology, some soils in the UK have been their wettest since records began in 1961, this summer. The groundwater levels have also been at record levels in places for the time of year, especially in the north east, NW England, NW Midlands and Gloucestershire area.

According to the Hydrological Survey for England & Wales in July, many catchment areas were close to saturation by late July and as a result flash flooding was common, as well as the more severe flooding around the 20-25th that gathered a lot of media attention. In central England the run off patterns were typical of a wet winter with reservoir stocks unusually high. Soils were so wet that there was a substantial aquifer recharge in some areas- which is evidently very rare in summer.

As we mentioned last month, one of the problems we are now likely to face is that any large amounts of rain running into the wet soil are likely to run straight off again, giving an enhanced flood risk through the coming autumn and winter. We saw this a couple of times in mid August in fact, when parts of  Kent around Dover and South Devon around Torbay were affected by flash flooding, as heavy rain ran straight off wet ground, rather than sink into the ground.

What this means is that those in areas prone to river and flash flooding will need to extra vigilant this autumn and winter as these scenes could well be repeated if we have any heavy short period rainfall in storms or longer term more generalised heavy rainfall over a period of a few days or weeks.

The advice we gave last year stands and given the recent flooding hopefully the level of awareness of the possibility of flooding and related dangers will be higher now generally.

It is as well to look out your insurance and be aware of what exactly is and is not covered by it, in relation to flood cover. Whilst the overwhelming majority of household policies provide cover in respect of flooding it's definitely worth checking your policy now to make sure this is the case if you think you might be at risk. For commercial premises flood cover is normally provided as an optional extra and incurs an additional premium.

A fairly comprehensive section on the website here from the Association of British Insurers gives some useful general and more specific advice from insurance companies in relation to concerns about flooding, which may well be of use. Another site, if the worst comes to the worst, called simply 'helpimflooded' may also be of use though it assumes you still have an internet link with power of course!