Poor folk in Crickhowell.

I think we’ve swerved it here in Heb, thank God, I’ll bet all the news reporters that have appeared in town are disappointed. (**** ’em)

A huge amount of water has come out of the sky this morning in Pembrokeshire. It’s eased now but was solid for hours earlier.

Just spoke to my dad and it seems they got away with relatively minimal damage. They live on the street that is reported on the BBC as having a surge of water early this morning when the storm drains failed. Thankfully their house is a little higher up than the bottom of the street, also it’s laid out with the kitchen a half floor lower than the lounge. The garden is still completely underwater by a good 15 feet at the bottom but the water is only just on the top lawn. The kitchen, utility room and bathroom were all flooded with 4 feet of water but it stopped rising just short of entering the lounge. They’ve lost all their food and some of dad’s medicines plus all the dog food, that’s the immediate worry but friends in town are offering them food, warmth and lodging if they need it. The hospital is aware of the lost medicines and will get fresh ones out to him as soon as the main road re-opens. The neighbours below them have lost everything so neither mum or dad are downbeat. The risk now is of waterborne diseases that could target them both and of any more rain upstream. My sister lives in Brecon so if there is any sign of more rain causing problems up there she’ll phone them and get them moved to higher ground. What is for definite is that the lower garage we have down the bottom of the lane will be full of water so my trailer is rattling around in there but thankfully we sold mum’s old car on Wednesday so that’s not a worry.

Initial reports from friends there say the flood defences failed to cause the surge, whether that was the flood bank or the storm drain covers giving way and letting the water the wrong way I don’t know.

Hopefully that’s all of the excitement over with.

Cancelled plans to see my folks at the coast due to Stormaggedon .

No wind and drizzle.  Grrrr

@nickc – vermin though they are you need the media to get the message out that this weather (poor land management, climate change whatever) has real impacts on peoples lives. Otherwise it’s quite easy to assume it’s just a load of flooded fields and inconvenience to trains.

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Braving Storm Dennis #mtb #mtblife #singlespeed #singlespeedmtb #steelisreal #curtisbikes #am9 #noblwheels #lakecycling #staffiesofinstagram #staffordshirebullterrier #staffy #staffie #rustcomponents #southdowns #southdownsnationalpark #roninstem #maddogsandenglishmen

A post shared by Ming the Merciless (@ming_t_merciless) on Feb 16, 2020 at 5:03am PST

Death by hashtag there.

@csb If I thought for a second that the BBC and ITN crews were here for anything other than “disaster porn” to be shown on the news channel all day I’d perhaps agree with you. But as that’s all they’re here for, then I’m glad they went away empty handed quite frankly

Looks like we’re getting round 2 now. Winds picked up and it’s lashing it down.

Bright sunshine and clear skies here on the Calderdale border now, mental hail storm 30 minutes ago and air temp dropped 5 degrees.

I suspect if there were no news teams for the flooding people would be whining that anything that happens outside London is ignored by the media.

Flew out of Cardiff airport to Spain yesterday one step ahead of Dennis. Woke up thus morning to the news people down the road had been evacuated. And if the Taff had risen a couple of more inches we would have been flooded 😟😟. Rivers going down now so hopefully we’ve been lucky. 🤞🤞

just been for a walk, very wet under foot but the rivers have been much higher in the past.

Been bright sunshine on Gower since about 1pm. #StormDennis #Fakenews 😁

Just hit for another round on the south coast.

Wigan to rivi was thankfully disappointing ystrdy, i expected more.

Same again today, disappointed as I wanted badass storms to impress my legion of 15 Strava followers.

Oh well.

The bridge in Usk has been damaged, not sure if this is true but the pictures are astonishing.

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Otter’s pocket conditions out there. #stormdennis #westsussex #flooding #hiluxsurf

A post shared by James Kennedy (@pictonroad) on Feb 16, 2020 at 8:45am PST

Notorious spot in West Sussex. Could feel the vehicle pushing against the weight of the water. Just been on a tour of mid Kent, I have never seen anywhere so wet in my life.

Heading into work for a 12hr shift tonight, South East has taken an absolute soaking.

Bloody hell, I think driving in conditions like that would scare the beejesus out of me, glad I don’t have to!

Lots of localised flooding in local lanes / stranded vehicles etc. I have standing water in the bottom half of my garden – never seen it this bad in 25 years.

my cousin and her hubby have been with us today in Hants. His mum is 100 yds from the Usk so we’ve been monitoring levels there via websites. I think the flash point was 12pm today as tide was high in Newport then and water baked up. I think the flood defences held. The levels were the highest recorded since the defences went in I believe.

This site has live levels info and a good selection of live webcams with one pointing at the Usk town bridge from the petrol station.

https://www.farsondigitalwatercams.com/locations/usk

Read the remarkable story of the abandoned cargo ship Alta, which has been drifting in the mid-Atlantic for over a year and has run aground on the #Cork coast, courtesy of #StormDennis. It has quite the colourful past! Via @RTENewsNow. https://t.co/TeI2dkdpIE

— Paschal Sheehy (@PaschalSheehy) February 16, 2020

Who the hell abandons an 80ft long boat in the middle of the Atlantic…For a Year!!

It’s rather windy in Dunblane now – and we’re in a properly sheltered bit…

just been reading about the Alta. looks like the owners couldn’t get a tug co to come and get it for whatever reason – didn’t have the cash? Seems nuts that you can just let it drift and abandon it. Now the Irish are stuck dealing with it for no other reason than a storm blows it onshore.

Yeah the Alta has a tale to tell, abandoned, recovered, hijacked twice, spotted by the navy …

https://www.rte.ie/amp/1115669/

I went down and saw the river at Usk today, can confirm highest recorded levels since the defences went in – police and NRW/CNC in attendance monitoring and stopping traffic, but no damage reported (as at about 3:00pm). Water apparently starting to recede from a 12:00 highest point. It’s tidal here (just) and high tide was earlier in the day, apparently.

There was what looked like a coastguard chopper hovering around 4:30 or 5:00 though – I’m hoping everyone’s OK.

Abergavenny not looking good!! pic.twitter.com/QJLxhlTFBM

— Graham Nigel (@NigelHeal) February 16, 2020

Look at this absolute moron!

I spent much of today in Taff’s Well helping my son to move furniture out of his house to a safer spot. He lives right on the river and spent the night watching the level rise and rise, to way above any previous levels. The nextdoor property was submerged when the 4 metre high flood banks were over-topped, the neighbour is devastated.

High tide has been and gone now and the levels are dropping fast.

High and dry on the Malverns as long as we don’t wish to travel by road.

Powick? Underwater
Worcester Bridge? No, even if could get to it.
Hereford road underwater at Castle Frome
No go to Upton/M50
Holt Heath Severn crossing nuh uh.
Basically stuck here. Will cycle down to powick see if they need help

**** hell look that that ferry!!

From the bbc’s story on that video

“Haulage driver William Campbell, who shot the footage, later boarded the ferry and described his journey as a “wee bit choppy”.”

Loads of water flowing across the A5 near Corwen today, the Dee / Dyfrdwy was as high as I’ve ever seen it. Oddly, north of Cerrigydrudion the fields weren’t as wet and the Conwy wasn’t as high as I expected and Ogwen was windy but water levels weren’t far above normal.

The levels in the upper Severn catchment above Shrewsbury are as bad as I’ve ever known. The gauge where the Vyrnwy & Severn join is only 10cm below the peak level in the 2000 floods. Some towns like Shrewsbury and Ironbridge have much better defences than 20 years ago but it spells misery for those further downstream.

If hydrology and floods is your bag then Dave Throup (@davethroupea) is a fascinating twitter follow.

Regarding @eat_more_cheese’s thread on blame, if you read the research and reports (sometimes buried and almost always ignored by decision-makers) then this is always going to happen. Even if you put aside climate change, then building houses etc on floodplains, channelling and engineering, lack of storage and slowing in the uplands all contribute to exacerbating the situation and some of the research has been out there for decades.

So when the NFU argue in their shitty magazine that farmers are blameless while the answer is dredging and getting the water downstream as fast as possible I feel like it’s time to shoot someone. Anyone who thinks there’s a simple answer to any complex question doesn’t deserve to have their opinion see the light of day.

East of Scotland this weekend has been breezy but we must have been lucky and last weekend it was slightly breezier with a wee bit rain, the Queensferry crossing being shut for a couple of days was a bit of a pain so kind of feel sorry for those folk getting flooded

[strong]Simon E[/strong] wrote:

…………….. Anyone who thinks there’s a simple answer to any complex question doesn’t deserve to have their opinion see the light of day.

Very true. But how about these facts. Agricultural land use in the hills of Wales has hardly changed (structurally) one bit in the last 100 years with the exception that there has been a fair bit of land abandonment which has seen afforestation, and sheep numbers have declined drastically. Still we have floods downstream.
Plus there has been massive regeneration of hedgerows and planting of streamside corridors all across the country. Still we have floods downstream.
The argument for dredging of rivers to prevent flooding is specific to areas where farmland has been historically created by the very act of dredging and managing rivers like in the Somerset levels. No-one (of right mind) these days suggests dredging in upland valleys like in Wales today or Yorkshire last week.
I fear you have completely missed the point and have fallen into exactly the trap of simplistic finger pointing that you suggest you hate so much. Maybe it is the opinions of persons like yourself that “do not deserve to see the light of day” as you put it.

The Taffs Well and Nantgarw area has been devastated by it, there is literally nowhere for the water to go once the flood defences were breached. Has the bank been compromised as if it has then the flooding could come straight back as the tide comes back in, the estuary is full of debris and there’s a lot of water till coming down the river upstream so I fear they’re not out of the woods yet.

The bank was overtopped.

A friend who is a water engineer finally snapped on social media last night and point out that water is not compressible, you can’t make it disappear, you have to try and control it and store it till you can dispose of it safely.

Apparently our local floodplain did its job yesterday, but only just. Roads west, south and east out of town yesterday all flooded, but very few properties affected

East of Scotland this weekend has been breezy

Similar here, although being perched on top of a hill on the south coast of Fife made for a noisy night with 100kph winds seemingly coming unhindered down the chimneys.

Drawbacks of a nice view and an old house.

No danger of flooding, some danger of losing a roof already in need of replacement in the next year or two. I noticed next doors roof (flat felt) was starting to peel back on the southern side.

Agricultural land use in the hills of Wales has hardly changed (structurally) one bit in the last 100 years

That’s not true. I recall the wholesale implementation of drainage of marginal land in the Welsh uplands, meaning water ends up in the rivers faster. And some of the other effects of changes in agricultural practice, ploughing in places where it wasn’t previously possible, ever increasing emphasis on yield over other factors (esp. dairy), and that’s before we get onto the widespread use of chemical such as nitrate fertiliser since WW2, which have had a range of hugely negative effects.

I don’t know where you’ve seen “massive regeneration of hedgerows and planting of streamside corridors” but it’s not taking place on a significant scale in any of the places I know; yes a few farmers have been persuaded to do a bit of bankside planting but it’s token stuff in specific locations, often led by the local wildlife trust. Farmers generally do not go around planting native trees and I’ve seen miles of hedges ripped out and replaced with fencing but tiny amounts that have been planted (and they often look pretty pathetic).

I fear you have completely missed the point and have fallen into exactly the trap of simplistic finger pointing that you suggest you hate so much.

No, you just think you’re being unfairly maligned, even though I said that farming practices are only one part of a complex problem.

Back in the 80’s there was grant money to plough land that hadn’t previously been ploughed. I think the thinking behind it was sound but in places taken to the extreme. An example was watching a Ford County with a 3 furrow plough driving off a cliff (ok very steep hillside) being winched back up and repeat. All it was doing was making a mess but they collected the grant money. I was at a motorcycle enduro at the time in Mid Wales so had plenty of time waiting for our boy to finish his lap.