Britain's "New Normal"

Are you getting the feeling that maybe climate change is closing in on us? In Yorkshire and Lincolnshire today they're bracing for a month's worth of rain in the course of just 24 hours.

Flash flooding hit towns and villages in the East Riding of Yorkshire and north-east Lincolnshire. There was a metre (3ft) of standing water in parts of Withernsea and further flooding in the Grimsby and Immingham areas.

The Humberside fire and rescue service said it responded to calls on Tuesday evening from Bridlington to Hull, and from towns south of the river Humber. Meanwhile, Grimsby Town’s League Cup football match with Derby County had to be abandoned on Tuesday night because of the heavy rain.

Social media users posted pictures of stranded cars on the road into Flamborough, with Melanie Onn, Labour MP for Great Grimsby, tweeting pictures of the waterlogged roads, saying some were “like a river” and the water was “over my ankles”.

While continental Europe experienced a heatwave, Brits used the hashtag #Britishsummertime to post tongue-in-cheek memes and gifs of rain and flooding, featuring Noah’s Ark, Singing in the Rain and Game of Thrones’ Jon Snow facing the elements.

Meanwhile the continent still bakes under an intense heatwave. I spoke with a woman who last month spent a delightful albeit still bearably hot couple of weeks in Croatia and Montenegro. She has friends who just returned to Vancouver after having to abort their long-planned bicycling holiday through southern Europe because it was simply too damned hot.

This is the "new normal." British Columbia is blanketed in wildfire smoke, eastern Canada is cold and wet, Britain is flooding, Europe is roasting, and, oh yeah, up in the Arctic, Greenland is on fire. Yeah, Greenland.