This article appears as part of the Winds of Change newsletter.

Roads in Saltcoats turned into rivers. A 60-year-old man dead, tragically hit by a falling tree. A boat thrown by the storm into the road, in Gourock. Road closures. Businesses and homes flooded in Renfrew, where £10 million flood defences failed to be activated.

Fewer people die in British floods today than in catastrophes such as the Muckle Spate, which assaulted Speyside in 1829, taking out 22 bridges, making 600 families homeless and claiming between six and nine lives.

But nevertheless, Storm Boelo, delivered by a climate-change super-charged El Nino, showed the ways in which we were not ready.

It exposed not simply a shortage of flood defences, but a failure to turn warnings, strategies and existing infrastructure into action before the water arrived. Last year Audit Scotland issued its Flooding In Communities report detailing uncertain funding, delayed schemes, capacity shortages, inconsistent data and insufficiently clear leadership. Storm Boelo reminds us that, a year on, not enough urgency has been applied.

Earlier this year, the Climate Change Committee published its A Well-Adapted UK report, joining previous reports in highlighting flooding as a major risk faced by Scotland, assessing risk as very high at present with an overall verdict of “critical action needed”.

It predicted costs of flooding heading on into the future, with 2050 likely to see total damages including indirect impacts of up to £379 million. “Economic damages per person are expected to be significantly larger in Scotland than England: £450 vs. £109 under a high warming scenario.”

The Climate Change Committee’s report said that Scotland is expected to be the UK nation most affected by increasing seasonal rainfall intensity, particularly western Scotland. It also says western Scotland already experiences the UK’s highest wind-driven rain intensity.

The........

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