Floods (Oct 20th ‘23)

[Pattree]

Yep. The rain has eased off but down here the water is still rising. The Severn won’t peak in Shropshire till early Monday.
My wife drove down a lane with little more than puddles this morning. I drive the same lane this evening and ploughed a half meter furrow in a small lake. It will be impassable tomorrow.

 

[Woody girl]

So far, so good here on exmoor in my valley. The worst seemed to swerve north of us, and tho its been heavy rain Thursday night and an overnight power cut, things seem to be fairly OK with no flood warnings on both my local rivers, in the area.
They are pretty full though, and with the water draining off the tops, we could have a few big puddles in the next 24 hrs to paddle through.
We've been very lucky here.
I do hope nobody is suffering from flooded homes. Stay safe out there.

 

[Laurentius]

My wood was under water yesterday with the river only a few centimetres from its all time highest level, however it was alright today with the water busy on its way down south to be someone elses problem.

 

[LapplandBrummie]

Stay safe folks! Looked to be really bad in some places, from the images I saw. I used to live in a village in Staffs that went through a spell of flooding every few years, and it is not nice, to put it mildly. I hope it's easing up now.

 

[Paul_B]

Kendal suffered a lot of flooding a good few years ago with houses by the river effectively losing value dramatically. With things like 100 year floods happening every few years somewhere in the UK I think the aesthetics of living overlooking a river isn't worth the risk of such heartache of a flood.

I hope everyone on here is safe and free of flooding in their homes.

 

[Paul_B]

One little point, it's time we tried to reverse the canalisation of rivers upstream. There's some good work with true rewilding of rivers such as up St John's in the Vale area of Cumbria I believe. Reversal of a straight drainage channel for the river to a shallow, meander that slows down the water after heavy rains. We need to slow the flow down so the lower lands can drain quick enough. However that means farmers losing workable land and will need compensation.

Sorry if that's preaching and inappropriate on a thread about catching up with ppl and their flood situation

 

[Pattree]

We go to Kendall every year in December. We were there in that bad flood but in dry digs.
For the last ten years or so we have taken an apartment on the R. Greta. The wall is the river bank. It was refurbished after the flood and is designed to be flood resistant. I’d have loved to be in it this week.
We drove through a “puddle” at Low Wood. When I looked left I was looking straight across Windermere.
I hope you guys are not suffering anything like that this time around.

 

[Pattree]

Sorry if that's preaching and inappropriate on a thread about catching up with ppl and their flood situation

This is well worth a new thread, particularly if folk here have streams on their land.

 

[Paul_B]

I live in the south of Cumbria and tbh the storm wasn't that bad. The only issue we had was the wind seemed to affect the satellite dish and the freesat signal would go a bit funny. We had more rain the storm before. It was not at all bad.

Its strange how easy we had it when so many north, south and east of us had it so bad.

In our first year in our new house in autumn we had a long spell of continuous rain. Everywhere around us in the lowlands got flooded badly. A few days it was best not to go out in the van since most directions were blocked by floods.

That period of time we had a few days where our garage flooded from halfway back on the uphill side across and out to the driveway. The rear kept dry. The water was bubbling up from under stone concrete flags set level for appliances. It was quite bad.

I spent a fair bit of time looking up what we could do regarding landscaping the back garden which is a fairly steep hill but with flat, landscaped borders. Namely a French drain to direct groundwater past the garage. We never did that but it's never been as bad as that first year so no more floods. There's a lot more self propagated bracken in the area of sloping border we cleared due to overgrown and untended shrubs and trees that had grown into each other or grown straggly or bars bare. Apparently bracken is very good at absorbing water thus it might have slowed the groundwater enough to reduce the risk of flooding in the garage.

I wonder whether anyone has had the opportunity to contribute to prevention of floods or reduction of it even in a very tiny way? Not that I think our accidental increase in bracken, which may or may not have prevented flooding in the garage, amounts to anything on a wider scale.