9:35am Thursday 11th June 2009
WELLIES, waterproofs and waders.
Music fans heading to this year’s Glastonbury Festival are being warned to pack plenty of wet weather clothing and prepare for meadows of mud as experts in Southampton predict the summer event could be hit by a monsoon.
Footage from the mud-swamp that was Glastonbury 2005
The annual music and arts festival is well known for suffering torrential downpours and rivers of brown mud and Dr Craig Wallace from the University of Southampton says it could happen again as typically at this time of year the UK is hit by a monsoon that sweeps across Europe each year.
The last time the festival was plagued by mud was in 2007 where improved drainage put in during the previous year’s break was hailed a success.
Previously in 2005, revellers had to fight against two months of rain falling in several hours resulting in torrents of muddy water carrying away tents and saw people travelling around the 900 acre site in canoes and inflatable dinghys.
Dr Wallace, who has studied computer models of the weather for 30 years, said that two separate waves of monsoon-type rain sweep across northwestern Europe each June – at the start of the month and then again in the final fortnight.
The annual downpour is why events like Glastonbury and Wimbledon are often hit by torrential rain.
He said the European monsoon is regular but is difficult to work out exactly why they strike each year.
“It’s so predictable it seems easy to understand – but it’s not,” he said.
About 140,000 people are expected to brave the elements from June 24 to June 28 to watch Bruce Springsteen, Blur and Neil Young in the biggest performing arts festival in the world.
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