natural disasters in the uk?

My boyfriend and I were having this discussion about living in "dangerous" places, as far as natural disasters go. I've lived in Tokyo and felt major earthquakes (7.2), lived in Naples, Italy (which is dangerous itself!) close to Mt. Vesuvius, and I'm currently residing in my homestate, California with the abundance of wildfires, very few but have felt earthquakes, mudslides, heat waves and so on...That being said, he questions why the heck would I want to LIVE in those kind of places with my home being potentially destroyed and having to rebuild a life. I told him I look far beyond that, it's about the culture, the people, the food... and that I would live in Japan again in a heartbeat, even after what has happened. (That country has a special place in my heart.) You can't control natural disasters, they just happen and when it does, it may take a long time but you have to keep going on with your life.

He then stated, "well, the UK hasn't had any major natural disasters." I was stumped.

So, are there any life-threatening natural disasters that could hit part of the UK? I'm not wanting this and I actually feel relieved that I can't think of any. I'm just trying to prove to him that you can't live your life in fear...

Floods, earthquakes... we've had them!

I'd definitely move back to California despite the hazards nor did I blink an eye when planning my trip to Japan last year.

The earthquakes here are very small however.  The strongest ever recorded in the UK was a 6, most are lower than a 4 and do no damage.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_in_the_United_Kingdom

Flooding is more of an issue, but tend to be more localised than in the US.  So one town will be heavily affected, while the next town will be fine.  

There are actually more tornadoes in the UK than the rest of Europe, but due to geography these are less destructive than the ones in the US.  http://www.rmets.org/weather/phenomena/tornadoes.php

There are no forest fires here on the same level.  There can be peat fires, but it isn't the same thing.

My husband also points out that there aren't any poisonous animals or any major predators. 

Yeah, we don't tend to get the major natural disasters like in other areas of the world, but we do get occasional smaller disasters that affect us - the most common probably being flooding. However, as bookgrl said, floods tend to be more localised and usually certain areas of the country are more likely to suffer than others. For example, I've lived just 5 miles from the River Severn, which floods regularly, for more than 25 years, but I've never been affected by flooding personally as our town is on higher ground.

As we aren't on any plate tectonic boundaries, we don't get strong earthquakes and the volcanoes in the UK have been extinct for millions of years. We do actually get hundreds of earthquakes per year, but they are usually too small to be felt.

We can get hurricane events occasionally, although by the time they reach the UK, they are no longer classified as hurricanes. Basically, they are extra tropical storms: hurricanes that were originally bound for the US, then veered off course, got downgraded in strength as they crossed the Atlantic towards us, and then their activity got reinforced again and they developed back into larger storms.

The most notable of this type of storm was the so-called 'Great Storm of 1987' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Storm_of_1987), which caused weather forecaster Michael Fish to become infamous because of his insistence on TV that there was no hurricane coming... and then it battered us a few hours later. It was the worst storm to hit the UK in almost 300 years and took the lives of 22 people.

An elderly woman was killed after she fell down the stairs in an earthquake in North Wales in 1940. At most 10 people have been killed in British earthquakes in the last 400 years. 307 people were killed in floods in Essex in 1953 when the North Sea burst over flood barriers. 34 people died in a flood in Lynmouth, Devon in 1952.

There is a list of English natural disasters here...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Natural_disasters_in_England

As you will see, some of them were quite a long while ago.

so basically the UK is like anywhere in the US, just gotta know where to live to not get flooded, we have earthquakes in CT as well but apparently we never feel them either, we also get tornados so it seems like its based on what weather pattern there is

We've had a couple mild earthquakes up north in the last 2-3 years - Yorkshire & Cumbria.  One woke me up in the night & I had no clue what the heck was going on - I'd never been in an earthquake before.  It felt like the world/house tilted for a moment & that our heavy wooden bed frame - with heavy mattress & us in it, jumped off the floor & landed again on one leg.  As strange as it was, I convinced myself that I must have dreamt it (for a moment my half-asleep mind was going wild, thinking wth was that - even something supernatural & I don't even believe in ghosts - lol), until the next morning at the bus stop, a woman mentioned we'd had an earthquake.  DH slept through the whole thing.  Lol!

About six years ago, we had a series of earthquakes in Manchester. Nothing big, but quite a few of them over a week or two, still scary!

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/05/070507-tsunami-britain.html

Apparently we were hit back in 1607 by a pretty sizable tsunami. If you look at the Bristol Channel you can see it is a bit of a funnel situation. Of course there was the plague, but I don't know if that counts.

It's an interesting question. People asked it about New Orleans after Katrina, why would anyone live in a city below sea level right in the middle of hurricane alley?

In regards to climate change some are predicting problems for London as sea levels rise. It would be gradual, but with the right conditions - like a huge storm - who knows what could happen?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1537893/London-on-Sea-the-future-of-a-city-in-decay.html

Has everyone forgotten already the worst winter on record for nearly 100 years!?  Although it's not necessarily a natural disaster to get snow, we had more than our fair share this year and it did cause a lot of disruption.  Especially here in Northern Ireland where the water mains all completely went to pot and folks were without water for a few days.  Oh and not to mention our proximity to the I-can't-remember-how-to-spell-or-pronounce-it's-name volcano up in Iceland!  That caused quite a lof of headaches with flights.

Has everyone forgotten already the worst winter on record for nearly 100 years!?  Although it's not necessarily a natural disaster to get snow, we had more than our fair share this year and it did cause a lot of disruption.  .

This has to do with being prepared. If you live in an area where a certain type of natural disaster is common, you (and the government, businesses, etc.) are prepared for it, in a business is a big deal.

For example, the northern US and Canada regularly get much more snow than the UK's "worse winter" and life doesn't come to a halt because government allocates more rescources to snow removal and people prepare their cars for snowy/icy weather.

DH lived in Japan and experienced an earthquake there, and he says that newer buildings there are designed with earthquakes in mind because earthquakes are expected. I suppose the same is true for buildings in San Francisco.

On the other hand, the River Ouse in York floods at least several times a year, but there are flood defenses and buildings are built to account for this - e.g. houses are raised and have no cellars. In fact, there is a pub in York on the river that claims that is the most flooded pub in York or something like that to attract tourists.

There have been times when I haven't been able to take my normal route to work because the path was flooded so I just went an alternate way, and it wasn't a big deal.

Lots of people in other places would be dealing with flooded basements and property damage during lesser floods just because their cities and homes aren't designed to cope with it.

(We did have an earthquake here a few years ago when I was here in the UK. I also think there have been some tornadoes in the UK, just not in York since I've been here.)

The floods of 2007. My friend from HS had moved over 2 weeks before to Chesterfield when the floods hit and was in panic thats how it was going to be after a few days of heavy rain. Growing up on Long Island, and not far from water, we were used to flooding, but not like what we saw. In Meadowhall, you can still see the watermark (about 6ft high) of where the water settled.

There are parts of Sheffield where people are still living in caravans, 4 years on, because theyre waiting on insurance companies to still pay out for their homes.

These same floods then hit further down south a week or two later and did just as much damage.

My parents individually decided that living in California with threats of earthquakes, fires, and drought was worth never having to deal with snow ever again. They still feel this way despite having lost their house in the '89 quake (took 2 years to rebuild), living through 10 years of droughts in the 80s, and a fire in '85 that fortunately didn't touch our property (but if we hadn't been on vacation at the time we would've been evacuated) and left the mountains around us burnt to the ground. The 80s weren't a great decade. Plus everytime it rained heavily landslides did their best to wash away the local highway - the only access between our community and the nearest town/petrol/grocery store/hospital.

Ironically, ever 5 years or so it would snow and stick but you don't have to deal with it; either call out 'cause it snowed and won't everyone be shocked and envious, or wait five minutes for it to melt again.

Guys at school said that living here with the cold and the damp and the lack of sunshine is worth not having to deal with natural disasters and I laughed. That said, I'm glad I'm going to miss "The Big One" when it finally hits SF, though having to watch it on telly will be it's own kind of hell.

Forget the big one hitting Cali.  The buildings there are well prepared. 

The big one is going to be serious when the New Madrid fault decides to slip again.  Nothing in that area is built for it and the fact that is on bedrock will make it travel.

There was the "mad cow" (BSE) epidemic in the late '80s. We pretty much gave up eating beef and to this day are barred from donating blood in the U.S.

Let's not forget the man-made disaster of Chernobyl. As I recall, there was evidence of it reaching Wales and we were advised not to eat lamb for some time. I think some farm land there is still regarded as "dirty."

ETA: and what about the Iceland volcano not so long ago, which had repercussions for the British Isles?