How Emergency Warehouses Can Beat The Winter Floods

The New Year brought a reminder of one of the biggest challenges climate change is posing to the UK in 2025, as severe floods hit part of the country, not least in the north-west of England. For some, the consequences were worse than just having to dry out their carpets.

Among the unluckiest victims was Rick Vere-Hoose, who had invested £100,000 in gym equipment and was about to open it in the basement of an old mill in the centre of Stockport that had been converted into flats. However, floodwaters from the overflowing River Tame wrecked his equipment, leaving his whole project in limbo.

While this particular catastrophe was worse than that suffered by many others affected by the floods in the area and across the north and Midlands, it was a reminder that flooding is an increasing problem across much of the country. Events once described as ‘once in a century’ are happening every few years.

This being the case, there is every reason to be wary of more floods. Some places are always susceptible to them, of course, for there are places where natural flood plains have been built on and more will need to be done to mitigate the threat when it concerns homes and businesses in at-risk areas.

However, the reality is that a warmer climate is a wetter climate and that simply makes flooding more of an issue, which is why some businesses may find hiring or buying a pop-up warehouse can provide a solution.

Placed on higher and drier ground, this could provide a simple solution by becoming a place where equipment, goods and valuables of all kinds could be moved for safekeeping when premises are at risk of flooding and when there is no other immediately obvious place they can be moved to.

This action can be taken once the weather warning of an impending storm is received, or ahead of another event like a rapid thaw after a very cold and snowy spell, which could see rivers being swollen by vast quantities of snow melting all at once.

In response to the increasingly stormy weather, the Met Office and its counterparts in the Republic of Ireland and the Netherlands have set up a storm warning system, which includes the practice of naming storms. The latest one, Eowyn, represents the fifth of the 2024-25 season, with several weeks left to go before the milder spring weather arrives.

To be forewarned is to be forearmed and it should be noted that in many cases, it is not until after the storm has passed that the flood waters reach their peak, especially if you are located a long way downstream from the hills (Stockport, by contrast, is just a few miles from the Pennines, where the Mersey’s tributaries, the Tame and Goyt, arise).

Because the warehouse will be a pop-up affair, you need not be paying for a permanent storage facility that won’t be used for most of the year. Instead, it will be a convenient shelter that you can turn to whenever a weather emergency strikes, keeping your valuables dry even when your floor is under several feet of water.