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Hoying it down again in Boroughbridge right now. & 2 ducks have just flown past as I'm typing!
The original post was a little tongue in cheek but I couldn't find the appropriate emoticon!
Just crossed the Pennines twice this morning in torrential rain, reservoirs on both sides brimming so am guessing the folks of Manchester and Sheffield will have plenty of water. No need to water their gardens though, they'll have floated off down the road.
😀
[i]Why did you think all that water was in there? [/i]
I didn't know it was (really) - up until about an hour ago I didn't know there was an Elan Valley purposefully full of water or not 🙂
I bike can be washed with a bucket or pressure washer for a lot less water so can your car.
bollox - using a hose with a fine spray nozzle, i can wash my car in no time at all - the last time we had a hosepipe ban oop north and I washed the cars I used buckets and buckets. Just sloshing it somewhere in the vicinity that you need it is useless. In the time it took me to fill one bucket using the hose I could have sprayed the whole car
up until about an hour ago I didn't know there was an Elan Valley purposefully full of water or not
Where did you think the Elan river goes then, mm?
just been round damflask with the hound. can confirm i am in a shed load more danger of being washed away than parched to death.
crazy rain here atm.
[i]Where did you think the Elan river goes then, mm? [/i]
Into a Lotus?
all the reservoirs round ere are proper full!
just been round damflask
Talking about reservoirs is standard fair round Sheffield. It's actually a common ice breaker when approaching women in bars.
Though this may perhaps be why I am single.
Also TN don't invite southerners up to get our water for free. They have all the money remember. Which can you live without for the longest money or water?
thats a good question. i was planning on selling them the buckets to be honest.
free bucket full of water with every bucket bought.
how much is a decent bucket these days? about £50?
or you can have a 29" carbon fibre one for £50,000... that should get the STW massive onboard.
i've got some 650b titanium buckets myself perfect for drinking water around the surrey hills.
thats a good question. i was planning on selling them the buckets to be honest.
Bad plan. For that to work they'd have to come up here, we'd be awash with southerners. 😀
Better idea - we have a lot of large postal bags, reckon we could get a couple of litres in each one - cheaper than buckets so better margin, postal charges might sting a bit.
Ooh, look! Rain.
river loxley is bursting its banks up here. its a raging torrent and about 40ft wide in places.
looks fricking ace.
anyone know what the rule is on canoeing down such things? never had rapids on my door step before.
Water access is a real pain, it's all about who owns various rights - riparian rights, fishing, landownders of the banks, etc it goes on ad nauseum. If you think it's safe and you are a good enough paddler I'd be inclined to go for it. We really need a Kinder styleee mass trespass on our nations waterways.
that would be ace.
i should probably state that i am an inexperienced paddler, further hampered by a lack of a boaty type vessel.
reckon it would be good today though. uplifts from malin bridge to bradfield.
big old rapids, the water is proper hurtling down. no sign of any fishermen...
[i]further hampered by a lack of a boaty type vessel. [/i]
where's your bulldog spirit?
Improvise with an old bathtub or aunt.
i should probably state that i am an inexperienced paddler, further hampered by a lack of a boaty type vessel.
Get down Lidl and buy a LiLo - about as much fun as a Kayak and a fraction of the price - suggest wearing a helmet of some sort, what with all the trees and other assorted cr4p that will be joining you.
Will pick up a copy of the Star tonight to see the pics as they drag your limp, lifeless body out of a huge stopper. 😀
was considering body surfing (if that's real thing) having watched the dog hop in and immediately be whisked away at about 40mph.
there are some big old rocks in there though, thought a boaty type object might help.
ill have a quick look round and see what bits i can cobble together.
right.
i have the plastic dog shit spade from the garden as a paddle.
boat is either the dogs bed with inflated innertubes wrapped round it (more buoyant)
or the ironing board (bit more surf tastic)
see you on the news!
Good luck sir! :salute:
Isn't Sheffield city centre on proper flood alert. Does that mean that you will be floating past my window Trackniko ?
im up for the challenge. i think my proposed death route ultimately takes me under malin bridge and out through kelham island.
assuming i don't die, and fit under the bridges in town... i'll be in the fat cat supping off-tasting porters.
ciao.
watched the dog hop in and immediately be whisked away at about 40mph.
lordy.
i hope the dog's ok?
yeh he's only 4 months old. i beleive its called exposure training theory or something 😉
nah he loves it. water for him is almost as good as food.
Bit of proof...
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Loxley in spate.
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Hound asking to be let back in for another surf session.
Thats not that bad at all !
isnt it? you know what its normally like down there then?
Still raining!!
Personally I'm all for drought and global warming. I bloody hate rain and mud.
The water shortages we currently have were predicted years ago and little has been done to approach the issue.... mend a few pipes here and solve some leaks there. Job done.
There has been no joined up thinking by water companies, councils, government and other stakeholders to improve the current infrastructure for many many years.
In fact a spokesperson on the news tonight was complaining that some of the water pipes had been installed 100 years ago and so it wasn't his companies fault that they were leaking!!!
Apparantly, we've a 27 inch rainfall deficit over the last two years.
This month has seen a fall of two inches.
According to the nice man on Radio 4 it would need to rain from now to December, without let up, to avert another drought.
No, I don't get it either. 😐
those figures above would surely suggest that this is a far bigger problem than they are letting us know.
seems if we genuinely did need rain for 12 months then some folks definitely should have done something about it sooner.
all very strange. maybe inflated stats to explain away the pipe ban?
I don't know why some people appear to insist that a lot of rain over a short period has exactly the same effect as the same amount of rain over a prolonged period.
"No, I don't get it either."
Read above, its all to do with the water table and how it is way too low. All this rain is just running off in to the rivers and oceans and doesnt soak in to the ground. It takes time to fill up the water table.
This isnt all helped by the fact we are putting more and more hard surfaces down that prevent water soaking in to the ground.
scrub that. doesn't matter.
[i]Personally I'm all for drought and global warming. I bloody hate rain and mud. [/i]
Move to the South East then. Them buggers are always complaining about how little water they've got.
I'm still a wee bit confused as to why they are not building more reservoirs - plenty of water about, we just let the rivers flood and it goes into the oceans.
Seriously - population increase = more demand for water so build reservoirs inline with projected population increase? Better network to distribute water, and more efficient use of it - job done.
OK the water table has shrunk, so just capture more of the stuff coming out of the sky and running straight off the land into rivers. I honestly don't see why we should have hosepipe bans and not have these linked to reduced bills, after all the water companies are not providing the service we are paying for...
http://metofficenews.wordpress.com/
Looking at the England South area, which has been the focus of the current drought, this month is one of only three in the last two years which has seen significantly above average rainfall.As can be seen from the chart below, the majority of other months during that time have seen below average rainfall.
Monthly rainfall anomalies for region England south for the last 3 years. 13 of the last 24 months have seen less than 75% of average rainfall, and 6 months have seen less than 50%. Only 2 months - June 2011 and August 2010, have been significantly wetter than average.
Trevor Bishop, Head of Water Resources at the Environment Agency, said: “it’s going to take more than a week or two of rain to undo the effects of nearly two years of below average rainfall.
“More rain now will really help us get through the summer, and is good for the environment, farmers and gardeners, but it’s very unlikely to be enough to recharge the groundwater.”
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need to amend their average then. and provide better infrastructure to take account of it.
you cant run historical averages for ever, and keep saying you are below it.
otherwise average price of a car is what about £500?
two please.
The thing is, we 're an island so much of our water runs out to sea in small rivers & streams instead of forming large rivers which can be either dammed or be extracted. Damming small valleys is expensive.
We need to move water around - there are canals between London & Llangollen & Lancaster which could be used if a few pumping stations were installed. It's not happened, though.
tracknicko - Memberneed to amend their average then. and provide better infrastructure to take account of it.
you cant run historical averages for ever, and keep saying you are below it.
otherwise average price of a car is what about £500?
two please.
weather types average over 30 year time periods so short term fluctuations can be put in the context of recent climatological averages, rather than using a fixed average climate dating back to the formation of the planet's tertiary atmosphere.
We are actually due a switch from the current set of averages 1971-2000 to 1981-2010 time periods any time now.....(it takes a few years to do all the quality control number crunching checks though to quadruple check that the dataset is robust).
Switching from a 1971-2000 dataset to a 1981-2010 dataset may make the current drought stand out more though, as the 1976 drought will then have dropped out of the 30year average.
Canals normally need a water source to supply them such as a river also it's not down to the Environment Agency to build more reservoirs thats down to the water company's.
To build a reservoir you have to flood someones land which isn't going to go down well with people be it the land owner who is forced to sell his land or surrounding community's.
It'll never fill up the aquifers if it keeps going sideways at that speed!!!
I honestly don't see why we should have hosepipe bans and not have these linked to reduced bills, after all the water companies are not providing the service we are paying for...
Well if you have a meter like most people (I understand) then less use will give you a lower bill. That said I agree the water cos are guilty of underinvestment, OFWAT is guilty of being too weak, successive govts are guilty of not modifying building and planning regs to reduce hard surfacing and so on.
All I wanted to do this weekend was to go for a nice ride in the Chilterns and admire some bluebells and now I am going to have to get the dreaded turbo out!
Please can we go back to February/March weather?