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storm and floods in GB - is everyone ok?

rhubarbodendron

rhubarbodendron

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In the news they showed pretty bad pics of the recent floods in southwestern Britain. A few people have been killed or injured by fallen trees, one person died when his car got wedged under a bridge, another fell into a trench and drowned. Quite a lot of settlements are reported to be cut off completely. There was a major landslide in Wales and last night windspeeds around 90 mph were reported from Snowdonia.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/shocking-scenes-storm-hit-britain-054146136.html

We have quite a few members from that area (mainly Cornwall & Wales but also Southeastern England and parts of the Midlands), I believe.
Please report in! Are you and your families well? Is there some way we could help?

I haven't seen RevdKathie post in a while. Is your parish affected as well, Kathie?
 
Well it is possible that they might not be able to respond if they are ok. If power etc.. has been effected.
 
Well, I'd count a power failure as not being okay, particularly at this dark and cold time of the year. (For many of my British friends being unable to produce a hot cup of tea would certainly rank as a minor catastrophy :D )
 
Well the Met Office has issued weather/flood warnings for parts of Wales and the North East of England.
 
in the news they said it were over 300 single flood warnings. Do you always get them for single rivers or are there county- or nationwide ones as well? (just professional curiousity - I work for the surface water dpt. of the Bavarian Ministery for the Environment)
 
Falmouth, Cornwall. Having to ride 10 miles through this shit on a motorbike every morning at 7.30am. Took me an hour to get to work today because half the roads are closed off. It's cold, miserable and fucking horrifying.
 
Aww :( Is there no bus you could take, Pingfah?
I've never been to your area (but would love to!) but judging by the maps there are many hills around, some of which look quite steep. Do you get landslides or is the soil solid enough to stay in place?

The animals here don't think it'll be a cold and stormy winter. There are still a lot of spiders around and many migrating birds haven't left yet. This morning (or night, rather - 2 hours before sunrise) I heard a Robin :)
 
Rhubarbodendron said:
Aww :( Is there no bus you could take, Pingfah?
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There is, if I wanted to leave the house at 6.45am, stand around in the cold and rain as it is late every day, spend 70 minutes on the bus each way, pay £6 a day, and cope with the regular driver's strikes. Frankly i'd rather suffer on the bike :lol:

I've never been to your area (but would love to!) but judging by the maps there are many hills around, some of which look quite steep. Do you get landslides or is the soil solid enough to stay in place?
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Can't say I have ever encountered a landslide, we are having some trouble with the stability of the local bridges with this awful weather though. They are having to close many routes for fear of collapse.

When it's nice though, it's really nice. When we get good weather (hopefully that isn't a thing of the past, although these last few years it has started to feel that way), there is nowhere I would rather be. Falmouth has a huge number of bars and restaurants on the waterfront for relaxed summer drinking, it's packed full of good looking students at term time and holiday makers in the summer, and has some of the most beautiful coastline you could hope for.
 
Shazam! said:
Here in the North West of Blghty, it's glorious sunshine.
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Well in my corner of North West England, I wouldn't go so far as to describe it as glorious sunshine, yes the sun is there but there are also quite a few clouds obscuring it.
 
I saw floods in GB, and immediately thought you were talking about Green Bay, WI.

Checking out now...
 
Pingfah said:
There is, if I wanted to leave the house at 6.45am, stand around in the cold and rain as it is late every day, spend 70 minutes on the bus each way, pay £6 a day, and cope with the regular driver's strikes.
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Sounds like paradise, compared to Public transport in Bavaria!
When we get good weather [...]there is nowhere I would rather be.
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I'll definitely put Falmouth on my to-see list for my next vacation in GB :) It sounds like an awesome place to visit.

Bridge foundations are always the weak point in a flood because they usually aren't wide enough and so instead of running between the two ends of the bridge, the water hits them with full force, often carving them out of the surrounding soil. Also, fallen trees and other debris tend to get caught in bridges, they block the water's path and increase the pressure so that the bridges often get torn away as a whole. What really makes me furious is people standing on bridges and watching the flood. It's so damned risky!
 
Rhubarbodendron said:
What really makes me furious is people standing on bridges and watching the flood. It's so damned risky!
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Same with the news reporters on the US super storm.

I couldn't go to Birmingham for the weekend as both train routes out of Exeter were down, I could have got buses for half the trip, but in the end it was more trouble than it was worth. And I'd have missed watching the worst of the downpour too.

I live on a hill, but the drains block so the road next to us becomes a stream, and the bridge further down becamesunpassable. But it only lasts a few hours. I went out for a walk in it before it had all gone. It was about 40cm deep underneath the bridge.

I've only known it to do that three times in the past years (thats how long I've been here) and two of those times were in the past 3 months.
 
Rhubarbodendron said:
Pingfah said:
There is, if I wanted to leave the house at 6.45am, stand around in the cold and rain as it is late every day, spend 70 minutes on the bus each way, pay £6 a day, and cope with the regular driver's strikes.
Click to expand...
Sounds like paradise, compared to Public transport in Bavaria!
When we get good weather [...]there is nowhere I would rather be.
Click to expand...
I'll definitely put Falmouth on my to-see list for my next vacation in GB :) It sounds like an awesome place to visit.

Bridge foundations are always the weak point in a flood because they usually aren't wide enough and so instead of running between the two ends of the bridge, the water hits them with full force, often carving them out of the surrounding soil. Also, fallen trees and other debris tend to get caught in bridges, they block the water's path and increase the pressure so that the bridges often get torn away as a whole. What really makes me furious is people standing on bridges and watching the flood. It's so damned risky!
Click to expand...

You would think they would know better, after all it was only a couple of years ago when parts of Cumbria flooded, that a bridge gave way, costing the life of a Police Officer who was directing traffic off the bridge.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8369934.stm
 
I am not sure about the situation in GB, but over here in Germany a main reason for the floods worsening is surface sealing. The more ground is sealed up by buildings, roads, parking lots etc, the less water can filter into the soil. Consequently, it has to run off the surface, such flooding the sewers and rivers.
The overall amount of water stays the same, but it doesn't get sucked up by the soil anymore and then given off slowly, but runs into the rivers almost immediately, causing very quick and high floods which fortunately also ebb off very quickly.

A second factor in the problem is that many rivers and streams got straightened to make more room for farms and settlements. This results in a shortening of the riverbeds. They still have to deal with the same amount of water, though, and so the water level rises.
A side effect that worsens the floods even more is that a curved riverbed slows down the water speed while a straight one is like a highway for the water. This increases the speed of floods, making it difficult to escape them in time.

What we need is more swamps and wetlands that act as sponges, a complete stop of channelizing rivers and streams and nationwide restaurations of the original curved river and stream structure. Plus a lot of retention basins and ponds.
 
^Well that's part of the reason more concreate, building on flood plains etc.. Another I think is just the volume of water that's been falling as rain. The ground has absorbed as much water as it can.

We've also had some of the wettest months on record this year, and not many hot (well hot for the UK) periods to help dry.
 
Yeah people paving over the gardens to create driveways doesn't help, but we have had a lot of rain this year. Odd that at the start of the year all the talk was of hosepipe bans and water shortages. Oh how we laughed...
 
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