The BBC website is full of stories today about how poor Londoners and Home Counties residents had some heavy thunderstorms yesterday. Apparently, “one month’s worth of rain fell on London is less than 24 hours.” A prominent table shows how Reading had 20mm of rain, Hampton 41mm, and Farnborough 46mm.
Mmmm. Just in case they missed it, Nottingham had a recorded total of 55mm of rain over three days between 14-16 June (20mm was recorded on 15 June). There is only one Met Office station up here, at Watnall, and the heaviest localised rainfall was definitely not there, and actual rainfall at such locations was certainly much higher. Many homes and businesses were flooded. But that never got into the news headlines. And all this applied to areas of Leicestershire, Derbyshire, and South Yorkshire.
There are a couple of dozen Met Office stations in and around London – or what is considered to be “London” when the media is reporting things. The rainfall figures from yesterday are much less likely to have missed any extreme localised events.
As the title says, all that matters is London. No one else exists on the front pages.