I decided to attend on the Sunday, due to the forecast being better. As normal I travelled overnight.
As I waited for the entrance to open the rain started and came down so hard the road drainage system was overloaded very quickly and while the rain stopped some 30 mins later and roads didn't recover for some time.
However I was let in and for the entrance I came though was about the 6th vehicle in. I then walked to the AEW compound when the rain came down again and was worst than the earlier downpour that morning.
The weather cleared up and as I was going round the NATO AWACS I heard the crew talking about closing the aircraft due to the show being cancelled. They only spoke about the show being closed due to Health and Safety reasons and when I spoke to an RAF Sqd Ldr he confirmed that this was because the emergency services were being withdrawn to cover an expected river bank burst in Lincoln and if that happened he also expected the local military to be called out to assist the local services with rescue and repairs.
Yes I could ask for a refund but I did manage to get a few photo's into my collection so as far I'm concerned that money needs to go to the charities as they won't get what anyone might have expected.
Given the two downpours between 0600 and 0800 I don't think anyone was going to get any more notice and they had planned for the show to go on.
I don't think the Linc's Chief Constable and Fire Chief had any option to divert their forces to Lincoln. Any life lost due to lack of emergency cover would have had the moaners on this thread no doubt making complaints that the emergency services were not ready.
By the same scale you can't expect any public function with a large amount of people attending to go ahead without any emergency services cover because if the unexpected happens then people could die due to that lack of cover and that’s to big a price to pay, full stop.