Storm Angus – the first UK named storm of the season brings heavy rain

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On Sunday, Storm Angus brought winds of over 80mph, which battered southern areas of the UK. It was reported that over 1,000 homes, mainly in Devon, suffered power cuts and flooding immediately affected South Molton, Braunton, Bradiford and Swanage.
The storm moved away into the North Sea, but heavy rain has continued across the South West and tracked it’s way north throughout Monday.
Rivers in other parts of the country – the Midlands, across the North East and North West, Wales and the east of England – are now swollen and there are numerous flood warnings in place.
A passenger ferry was stranded at sea overnight and many roads have been closed. Rail travel in many areas has been affected. Network Rail warned yesterday that no mainline trains to or from London will be arriving or departing from Exeter for the next couple of days as parts of the mainline track have been washed away. Rail services have been similarly affected in the north of England and the Lake District.

Flood Warnings
As at 5pm yesterday, the Environment Agency warned that areas in Devon and the South Coast, the Midlands and the North East are at risk of flooding with 16 flood warnings – flooding is expected immediate action required – in place. There are also 111 flood alerts in force in many areas across England.
WeatherNet Warning
WeatherNet’s modelling, using the Environment Agency’s flood warnings, shows that over 1,000 UK properties are currently at risk of flooding (see map right).

HelpLine
On Sunday, our out-of-hours emergency HelpLine service saw an 85% increase in calls, compared to the previous Sunday. Around half of all calls were received between 6am and 12pm – by the afternoon, volumes of new calls had levelled off. The last time HelpLine received this volume of calls was on 6 December 2015, following Storm Desmond.

Ahead of the weekend, we had resourced our HelpLine service claims handling teams in line with the weather forecast information provided by both WeatherNet and the Met Office. It wasn’t until Saturday that the Met Office formally recognised Storm Angus, however, it seems that the call volumes have been disproportionate to the actual damage caused.
In response to the continued heavy rain and current risk of flooding, our HelpLine will be resourced to handle twice the normal volume of claims throughout today and overnight tonight and into tomorrow morning.

Claims Centres
Incoming claims numbers have so far been relatively low and initially from property owners mainly in areas of Cardiff, Exeter, Plymouth, Worthing, Folkstone, Towcester, South Buckinghamshire, Wiltshire, Northwood, Sittingbourne and Guernsey. These claims volumes are currently easily manageable and are being processed swiftly. National Adjusting Teams All our adjusters across the UK are ready to respond and assist customers who have experienced property damage due to Storm Angus and any subsequent flooding.

Next Update
We will issue another update on Storm Angus when or if claims volumes should increase significantly.