Aftermath

More talk of flooding I'm afraid. The news is so severe that the BBC actually postponed Super Vets in order to broadcast a special programme - woah! Obviously problems with Gloucester and Tewkesbury, still fun in Worcester, Evesham, etc., but not to bad in Stourport at the moment.

Always fun to listen to the London broadcasters. Ah yes Tewkesbury sitting on the Severn and A-von; A-von where's that Germany? Oh you mean the A-vun ;-)

News last night that they might have some flooding on the Thames; as this affects London expect defences to be in place well before any problems arise.

A situation that wasn't found at Upton-upon Severn where there were mutterings about the barriers or to be more precise the lack of barriers. Apparently due to the high scrap value of them they were being kept about 30-40 miles away from the site... great. But who cares, apparently even if they were in place the water would have topped them anyway. Er but we're talking volume of water here not depth, surely it would have stopped or hindered the fast flow of the water and kept a good deal out?

Speaking of volume and depth, the forecasters keep talking about 100mm or 4 inches of rain falling. Okay how do you measure that? To put it into a non-scientific context fill a mug with an inch of water then tip it into a washing-up bowl or bucket. Do you have an inch depth of water in that? Diameter(or area) of the collecting instrument makes a difference, so what is that? Let's look at that font of all wisdom Wikipedia shall we. Well it's collected in a cylinder, as I expected, and the diameter of that cylinder (or reference cylinder for scaling purposes) is... um? Thank goodness for the Met Office which shows them using a 5 inch diameter collection funnel.

So now we know, better yet from the Remex site

25mm or 1 inch of rainfall produces:
1. Per Square yard- 4.7 gallons of water (21.37 litres)
2. Per Acre - 22,651 gallons (102,971 litres) of water weighing 102.7 tonnes
3. Per Hectare - 55,971 gallons (254,441 litres) of water weighing 253.7 tonnes
4. Per Square Mile-14.5 million gallons of water

and we got 4 inches <whistles> Nice to know that the water companies are channeling storing and processing that water for use in later months when it might get dry; I mean they'd have to be fools just to flush it out into the rivers and sea then try to claw it back later with desalination plants... oh wait.

In conjunction with Suzie's flood photos I've taken some after shots of the skate-park, you can see how high the water rose by the tide mark on the London Gap. The water has obviously yet to drain out of the bowl and it's interesting to note the puddle that's formed in front of the ramp, suggesting it's not quite as level as one would hope.

As you can see not only do we now possess our own lake, but a new moat too. I would like to point out that the river did not, I repeat did not, do this. The extent of the mud on the path is quite clear as to how far the water got, as borne out by Suzie's photos. This is a combination of the rain and the water table.

As mentioned Jim's got some more photos with their shiny new camera, which he's going to pass on probably tomorrow.

While on the prowl I've also got some pictures around St Bartholomew's that sits on top of the bank at Areley Kings


Traffic is deathly quiet in the mornings at the moment, but seems to make up for it in the evenings, what the hell was going on last night? We were just sat twiddling our thumbs. Yet again (again) I'd like to point out the joy that is the York Street entrance and make clear that there are no Give Way signs at either entrance despite the lack of lane markings and the damn stupid car-parking bays that quite bluntly should not bloody be there. Okay got that? I swear the only reason they've not repainted the lane markings is that it would highlight that very problem and force some action to be taken.