Wild Weather in 2012: East

Good evening. Welcome to a special programme looking at the

extraordinary weather of 2012. It has been a year like we have never

seen before. We are finding out why we can expect more to -- got the

scene in 2013. What does it mean for us here in the region now and

in the future. The British are well known for talking about the weather

and and 2012, we have probably talked about it more are than ever.

It was difficult to ignore. Here is a reminder of the Year of wild

weather. It started with storms and gales.

De QE2 Bridge was closed until mid- afternoon due to high winds,

causing long delays. And then a more rain. Traveller's

conditions were treacherous. Five surprisingly, this turned out

to be the driest January since 19 - - since 1921. And it got warmer.

Snowdrops coming through in winter end yet we can already be facing a

hosepipe ban in the summer. It is certainly a possibility, etc. They

drier weather continues, that we could see hose pipe bans.

Ivan great day like today the rain is not falling where we need it.

East Anglia remains the only party of the UK which remains in drought.

We got snow. And the coldest night in 30 years. Some drivers simply

abandon their cars and walk home. Schools across the region were

closed. Fog was the main problem for drivers. For others, it was a

chance to wrap up warm and have fun. When the snow melted, we were back

with the drought. Our rivers were dangerously low. Seen, oxygen

levels will plummet. It is time to act.

This year rescues are not unusual, but you would expect them to be

carried out in July or early August -- Fischer rescues. Two have been

in March is unprecedented. Our reservoirs needed rain, the

situation was getting serious. Water had now become precious, a

hosepipe ban was announced to begin in April.

This company in Stevenage sell water butts on the Web. Sales have

increased dramatically. Now that the hosepipe ban is eminent people

are realising that they need water butts.

How long will it go on for? That is any one's guess. The one two

decades ago lasted 481 days. have had the driest period far many

years. The drought continued. We needed

rain. And then it came. This was the wettest April in more than 100

years. Yet, the region was still in drought. No signs of the rain

letting up. Manly in April we would expect 45-50 mm of rain. Some

places are run target to have double that. This rain makes the

hosepipe ban Lucan nonsense? It is helping us, because it is

suppressing demand. With no let up from the rain,

Easter Bank Holiday was a knock out. -- washout. It really is a demand

going. People's spirits are low. We'd just won the Sunday Star

Shining so that people will feel a bit happier and start enjoying the

sea front -- and we want the sun have to start shining.

Trees up rooted, debris strewn around. It took them many tornado

just seconds to cost around �100,000 worth of damage.

And then, more rain. If in fact, one month's work -- one

month's worth in just an hour. The same as what is is now an

inland sea. -- the famous are washes.

The poor little spice just cannot grow. -- potatoes.

This year, the Suffolk Show was abandoned. They say this

abandonment could cost then several hundred 1,000 pounds.

The recent downpour, combined with the showers have scuppered nine

months of preparation. They show usually generates between 15 and

�20,000. Helping to support a young farmers. It is a high price to pay

for the great British weather, which once again has a lot to

answer for. For those of us looking forward to

a summer holiday, we got the wettest July on record.

Wattisham, rainfall was up by 155 %. In Bedford it is pretty much the

same, but in Marham it is getting on for a double.

Then at last came the Sun. The country's warmest day of the year

is recorded in Cavendish, Suffolk. It was 32.4 degrees in the village

on Saturday. Dot his place in the country on the hottest day of the

year so far. -- the hottest place. We have brought in extra staff to

cover. Pretty hard for Britain, it is fantastic. Of far too hot.

At the V Festival there was no need for Wellington boots this year, the

crowds look for a shade as the sun shone on.

Many parts of the reading experience to work 30 degrees.

Hotter than Honolulu in Hawaii. The good weather lasted into September,

but not for long enough. But there was 21 % more sunshine than normal,

it was also the coldest September in the region far more than a

decade. October gave us a sprinkling of

hail, more rain and more floods. It just got worse.

What are you it has been. I am here in Cavendish in Suffolk, where one

weekend in August we have that highest recorded temperature in the

country, 32.4 degrees Celsius, around 90 degrees Fahrenheit, and a

real contrast with today. We know how the weather affected as you in

the East during 2012, we know what happened, but do we know why?

In the spring of 2012, England was dry. Reservoirs were dangerously

low, much of the country was in drought. It is a very serious

situation, our underground sources are very well.

It seemed that the we think that could save us would be a highly

unusual long spell of heavy rain. But you should be careful what you

wish for. The worst drought since 1976 was followed by the wettest

April to June on record. I am going to find out what the scientists say

are the reasons for this. I have acquit myself with a huge blow, to

put things into perspective it -- be equipped myself.

-- with a huge globe. I'm going to meet those who were affected

explain to them why it happened. First stop, North Tyneside, hit by

a flash flood in June. It was really so real. You were looking

out of your window and just seeing a man in at two new going down the

street. -- in a boat going down the street.

I have come up to the area to explain to people the reason for

this. To do that, you have to look at things with that global view,

which is why I have this year. In particular, we have to talk about

this. This is a jet stream. It is fast moving the air that carries

the weather systems. It is the dividing line -- line between the

colder ear and a warrior in the south. -- Dewar might air in the

south. The reason it is important is because the jet stream guides

and carry storms across the Atlantic to the UK. It is the first

thing that determines the UK weather. The jet stream pushes bad

weather towards us? But the fact that the jet stream

excess does not explain canoeing on the streets of North Tyneside.

I know people in West Sussex who want to know more.

I am on my way to a place called Racal Chambis. One night in June,

they had a month's worth of rain. The Sussex beach holiday village on

the coast it took the brunt. I got called in the early hours of Monday

morning and we had to start evacuating people.

Let us speak to the workers of the holiday park about the fact that

there is a pattern to the way that the jet stream normally behaves

across the year. In winter, it is normally here, running across the

Atlantic towards the UK. We expect to get some spells of rain in the

winter. But this time things were different, so says this expert from

the University of Reading. In 2012, the jet stream was much further

south than we would have expected. What it meant was that the storms

that MAM we hit the UK -- that normally hit the UK were not

hitting. It was much drier. He if you do not have the Jetstream

carrion wet weather systems to the UK, as it should have been in the

winter, we end up drier. That is why we had so much fear

about A, and what would happen if we had a third dry winter. -- about

role -- about drought. In the summer, we be normally

expect the jet stream to the north of the UK. That means that we are

in the warm weather. We get spells of lovely warm sunshine, that is

the plan. But we know that that did not happen this year. The stance

and Normally missiles were too far south and it hit the UK -- the

stars that were normally hitting us. All year long, our weather has not

fitted the normal pattern. Basically, the Jetstream was in the

long place -- wrong place, and it got stuck. Do the scientists have

many theories about why it got stuck? After a night of intense

rain in the village here in Plymouth, this man found himself

trapped in his house. I was ringing the emergency services just trying

to get help. What the villagers want to know his best. Why was the

jet stream in the wrong position? Very good question. I wanted over

towards North America. I want to take you to the sea here, where we

know that the temperature of the sea here is higher than normal and

has been for quite a while. The theory is that because the sea is

warm my than normal, the jet stream does not get that Russian art, and

will end up further south and take So, if you influence the origin of

the jet stream, it's a bit like waving a long stick. You can have a

big effect at the end of the jet stream moving it away or onto the

UK. And the interesting thing is, we've seen this before in the 1950s.

Where does all the bad weather come from? The North Atlantic sea

temperature went up in a similar way, and at the same time there was

a corresponding series of wet summers. That is one theory.

Another theory relates to Arctic sea ice. You may have seen the

reports this year about the fact that the sea ice melted to a degree

that we've never seen before it was that low. One of the suggestions is

that change in the amount of Arctic sea ice has led to shifts in the

position of the jet stream and then to changes in the kind of weather

we get in the UK. But, of course, what we really want to know is what

are the summers going to be like in the future? Well it depends which

of those two theories has the most effect. It's the relationship

between those two and which is strongest which will determine what

happens next. But in principle, if the North Atlantic warming reverses,

then it could be that we flip into the opposite regime and have hot

dry summers in a decade or two from now. But what if it's the second

theory - the melting of the Arctic ice - which is the dominant factor?

What happens then? We think that the decline in Arctic sea ice is

part of man-made climate change. So, as the globe warms up the amount of

Arctic sea ice is just declining. And if it's that which is

dominating the position of the jet stream then we're going into

uncharted waters and we're kind of going into a position where the

weather that we are experiencing in the summer may be starting to

change. What a year of weather it has been and the answers lie well

beyond our shores. Now if the North Atlantic cools down we might get

our sunny summers back. But if it is all down to the melting Arctic

sea ice we're just going to have to Whatever caused it, 2012's year of

wild weather had a huge effect on our region. It ruined our holidays.

We put on sun cream one day and put up umbrellas the next. It made a

mess of our ponds, our allotments and our gardens. It even affected

what we eat. I want to find out how the bad weather has affected some

of our region's best known traditional food products so I've

come here to Tiptree, famous for its jam. Now, East Anglia grows

some of the best fruit in the country, which is then turned into

this. We also produce some of the finest wheat, to make the bread to

This 1,000 acre farm at St Osyth in Essex grows specialist milling

wheat for making bread and it is hard to believe but, in 2011, it

featured in the Guinness Book of Records for being the driest farm

in the country! What a difference a few months can make. Guy, parts of

your field look like a river. This must have been a very challenging

year. Yeah, I suppose we're the least wet farm now rather than the

driest farm. And your family has been farming here for... Is it

three generations? Yes, three generations here and several more

on land about six miles to the east of where we are now. And, yeah, my

grandfather could probably tell me of troubled times in the past. But

I doubt if he could find it as bad as it is now. I'm trying to

establish a crop in this field now. We have been reasonably successful

but we have still got these bear traps. We still have to farm around.

When we were combining around this bit, we got the combine stuck. And

that was for the 6th time. I've been farming for several years now

and I've never known having to pull combines out. And you pride

yourself on a certain standard of wheat. We always try to grow class

one, grade A milling wheat because we have this dry climate here it

enables us to usually harvest the grain in pristine condition. And I

would put myself up against any farmer in the world on the quality

of my wheat. But on a year like 2012, where it's been pretty

relentless with the rain through harvest, we've not produced the top

quality like we normally do. My wheat will still go for bread-

Guy's wheat is sold to a grain merchant in Harlow, who must assess

its quality before selling it on. The Home Counties here, within a 70

mile radius of Cambridge is producing the majority of the UK

wheat crop. And the nature of this horrible weather has meant our

prime market, particularly for export for human consumption, has

now been downgraded to almost feed quality this year. The actual

impact of the weather has meant the grains are far less dense. The

amount of end product you're going to get from this particular

material is going to much lower than they would usually expect.

quality of the flour for making bread depends on the density of the

grain and the 2012 crop didn't make the grade. We contract on the basis

of a 72 kilo, which is a measure of grain density. This year, this

material growers are selling to us well in advance, 72 kilo material,

they're ending up with material 65, 66 kilos. And it's very difficult

finding markets for this volume of this low quality material this year.

The grain ends up at the millers. Master millers, Marriages have been

producing quality flour here in Chelmsford, since 1824. But they

won't want a year like 2012 again. I think it is certainly the worst

I've known and probably one of the worst ones we've had in the history

of the firm. The wheat that we've had is very much thinner than you

would normally expect, which means it's much harder to get the white

flour out of the middle of the grain. We've also has a lot more

rubbish to take out of the wheat, so it means it's much more

difficult to maintain the quality. We have fairly extensive testing

facilities so we do analysis on the wheat and on the flour. We also

have a test bakery, and a baker who looks at it and sees how it bakes

so we have to keep that the same. Because our customers expect the

quality to be the same week in week out, year in year out and that's

what we have to do. What we are finding is that we're having a lot

more calls to farmers to say we're very sorry we can't pay you the

full price because this wheat isn't as good as it's supposed to be.

That has gone up a lot. Back on the farm, the bad weather has given Guy

other concerns. So, Guy, you've noticed the weather hasn't just

taken its toll on the crops but the wildlife too. It affects everything

Julie, we're quite keen on conserving barn owls on this farm

and you can see the nest boxes in the distance there. But the story

with the wet is, the incessant rain makes the level of the water in the

ditches rise, that drowns the bank and the field voles because it's

higher than usual, the lack of field voles effects the barn owls

because that's their food source, so when we come to ring the chicks

in the barn owl boxes to see if we've had a good year or bad year,

we find that there are very few chicks because the barn owls have

had a bad year because of lack of food. But it's not all bad news,

because you had a very special visitor. Yeah. Well, we had one

great ray of sunshine in April, we had an osprey arrive on the farm,

which I've never seen before, was treat to see and of course the

osprey is known as the fish eagle, so whether it thought my farm had

turned into a river, I don't know. But it seemed like it at the time.

I've noticed it's not just arable farmers like me who've had a

difficult time this year, even top fruit growers, even in my little

orchard here you can see the fruit hasn't set very well. There are

very few apples, and all that just makes for a very difficult year.

Not far from Guy, at Tiptree in Essex, there are fields and fields

of fruit. Here, the Wilkin family have been growing fruit to make jam

since 1865. Today, Wilkin and Sons export their jam across the world.

Chris, this is very impressive. Strawberry plants as far as the eye

can see. How much fruit do you grow here? On the farm, as a whole, we

grow about 300 acres, that's spread over 5 different sites. About 120

acres of that 300 acres is specifically down to strawberries.

We've had everything thrown at us this year, I mean we started off

through January, February, March and it was exceptionally dry and we

were extremely concerned at that point in time about how we were

going to make our extremely limited water supplies last all the way

through the summer. But what a contrast it's been since then. It

started raining in April and it essentially hasn't stopped since.

Our strawberries for jamming are traditional old English, June

bearing, which crop essentially through the middle of June into the

middle of July. They have their main flowering period through May.

And of course during May it was exceptionally wet and it was

exceptionally cold. As I understand it bees don't like to fly below 13

degrees and we had some very cold temperatures during the month and

as a result we've suffered very poor pollination on a lot of our

crops. Our aim is to be self- sufficient, but if you have a

catastrophic crop failure as we've had this year, we have no

alternative other than to go and try and source alternative supplies

of fruit either regionally or nationally as first preference. If

we can't find the fruit that we need within the UK, then we've got

to go further afield, as a last resort. So, has this made you think

about the way you go about growing your crops? Yeah, certainly when

you take a hit as big as the hit we've taken as a result of the

issues we've faced this year. We've got to look at alternative

mechanisms for trying to ensure our production is more consistent year

to year. We've taken a decision that we will start to protect much

more of the fruit that we're growing for the factory, which

traditionally has been grown in an open field situation. So, there

will be more poly tunnels like this? So, there will be more poly

tunnels like this. Yes, yes. And is there anything else you can do?

don't think there is. With everything you do in farming, we

are at the mercy of the weather. This is the Mulberry orchard, the

very first orchard to be planted by the Wilkin family. And the bees

have been pollinating these trees for around 150 years. But in 2012

there was simply less fruit, because the bad weather changed the

way the bees went about their So, how important is the role of

your bees at Tiptree? Well, without the pollination, no fruit I'm

afraid. Well, we can see it's still pretty wet and muddy here. Yes, it

is. The weather has caused you some real problems this year. All sorts

through the year. We had a fine period in March. Colonies thought

it was spring and used a lot of their stores up, building up,

thinking that the weather was going to continue. Unfortunately, it

didn't. And it's not only the weather at the time that the

pollination is necessary, it's the build-up of the colony. They need

to get lots of pollen and stores in so the queen can lay eggs and the

colony builds up. It didn't build up, this year. And then the rain

arrived. Right, so in April, we had colonies not as strong as normal,

they had the rain so they couldn't fly anyway. And of course they were

in trouble and of course the trees were in trouble because the flowers

were there and if nobody is there to transfer the pollen from one

flower to another, no fruit. Bees have been here 30 million years but

in pollination time these Bees didn't do as good a job as they

normally do and as far as service to Wilkins they unfortunately only

did the best they could, which Guy's wheat crop this year wasn't

good enough either, but bad weather across the other side of the world

turned out to be a lifesaver. Guy, this year wasn't quite the disaster

you thought it was going to be. good news was, while we were

getting rained on, in America they were having a terrible drought that

caused a global shortage of wheat, so that's driven up the price of my

wheat from �150 to �200 a tonne. So I got a good price for my wheat

although my yields were disappointing. And what about the

future? What should farmers like yourself be doing if we continue to

have such extreme weather? If the weather is going to stay this

difficult, as a farmer I think I would look to technology - make

sure I've got good combining, so I can snatch my crops and get them in

in good condition, when I get the small chances I do. I need to be

reliant on fungicides to keep the diseases off my crops. And as a

business, I suppose I could expand my business to I'm not quite so

dependent on crop production and I'd look to things like tourism and

leisure as possible additional sources of income. Guy has already

found some other uses for his land. He's turned part of it into a golf

course. He's built a holiday cottage and even rents some of it

as an airfield. And, 20 years ago, this was a field of wheat? Like

lots of farmers, we've diversified and set up an airstrip here. I

suppose the irony is in a bad year like 2012 the bad weather even

affects this. We had to close the strip in April, because the planes

just couldn't land. It was too boggy. The bad weather of 2012

affected everything. For our region's farmers, it set up a chain

of events which went from bad to worse. Guy Smith might have gone

under had it not been for a severe drought in America. But what about

next year? And the year after that? If we are to have drastic changes

in the weather, then our farmers will have to make more investment