A fierce, wet Atlantic storm soaked parts of England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Ireland with flooding rain, storm surge flooding and winds locally over 100 mph during the weekend.
Flooded roads in the centre of Appleby, north west England, as Storm Desmond hits the United Kingdom, Saturday Dec. 5, 2015. Roads have been closed throughout the North and Scotland as Storm Desmond caused road chaos, landslides and flooding. (Owen Humphreys/PA via AP)
Storm Desmond, the fourth named storm of the season, arrived Friday and continued into Saturday, prompting the issuance of the first red "take action" warning from the U.K. Met Office since Feb. 12, 2014 for parts of the north of England and the south of Scotland.
(MORE: U.K., Ireland Names Storms)
Shap, located just outside of Lake District National Park in the north of England picked up a whopping 10.34 inches (262.6 mm) of rain from Storm Desmond early Friday into early Sunday, according to the U.K. Met Office. Nearby Keswick measured 7.02 inches (178.4 mm) in that same 48-hour period. The heavy rain caused rivers to flood homes and forced evacuations in Cumbria and Northumberland,the U.K. Met Office reported.
Met Éireann, the Irish Meteorological Service, also issued red warnings for rainfall for Connacht, Donegal, Clare and Kerry. Up to 3 inches (75 mm) of rain had already soaked parts of Ireland as of Saturday afternoon.
Red alerts for heavy rain or flooding were also hoisted in far southern Norway and southwest Sweden. Eik Hove, Norway, had picked up 7.91 inches (201 mm) of rain over the past 48 hours through Saturday evening.
Storm Desmond tapped an atmospheric river, a long, narrow plume of deep moisture from the tropics into the mid-latitudes, keeping it parked over parts of Ireland, the U.K. and southern Scandinavia, a prime recipe for excessive precipitation.
In this case, the atmospheric river was over 5,300 miles (8,500 kilometers) long from the western Caribbean Sea to southern Sweden.
http://www.weather.com/news/news/storm-desmond-uk-ireland-scotland-december-2015
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