That implied they had enough petrol to make the pilgrimage, which in turn meant that they had queued at the pumps or, more likely, that tales of forecourt famine had been exaggerated. For drivers to fail to make any connection between their leisure use of motor vehicles and the possible causes of the floods in global warning due to carbon emissions is, sadly, all too typical. And yet the vast expansion of rivers out of their usual course does make a tremendous sight. If the property damage, human injury and public inconvenience can be put out of mind, the great spread of the waters on the land is indeed biblical to behold. We gave up personifying natural phenomena as part of our passage to civilisation and yet it is hard not to read character into the inland waterways.
Some streams are pacifist by nature.
Take the Welland or, for much of their course, the Trent and the Tweed. The Severn below Gloucester spreads as nature intended, as do the Forth east of Stirling and the Kent, with that huge sandy bowl of Morecambe Bay to fill. The Nene and Witham safely pour their excess into the great sump of Fenland. Some, heroic in a past life, carved gorges and deep channels, too narrow to allow much riparian building. A minority just will not stop offending.