Stormy near Keswick…..

Why do idiots always film with their phones in portrait?

Indeed annoys the hell out of me, classic first world problem

Haters have to hate as the Americans like to, slag Cameron off if he doesn’t visit, slag him off if he does. Yawm.

Tough times, many people are going to be displaced for a long time. Has anyone seen any appeals which have been set up ?

Tough times, many people are going to be displaced for a long time. Has anyone seen any appeals which have been set up ?

http://campaign.justgiving.com/charity/cumbriafoundation/cumbriafloodappeal2015

Just got a mail from the Rosthwaite YHA, no flooding issues to date so looks like a few days Lakes riding this Xmas is still on – Hurrah!

So, what wetsuit for riding Warnscale Bottom… 😆

for fund raising see here for a link (no association just saw it on t’ web)
https://twitter.com/cumbriacf
There may be others. Edit, too late see above too
It brings it home (I am just near Kendal) when you hear of a work colleague who has to move out (Lyth valley) to a flat as daughters bedroom under water.
But as mentioned above you just have to get on with it.
… even if you live on a hill the road below will flood and someone in an electric (hybrid) car will stall and the car safety go into safe mode blocking the road;) yes this happened.
Ride safe as they say.

just been out feeding the locals and the scenes of devastation are rather striking. sad to see folk will all their belongings just stren in the streets

THM, masses of studies in this, probably easier to start from the practice and work backwards

http://www.susdrain.org/

On the plus side all the sanitised trails are no more 🙂

No one feeling sorry for themselves on my delivery in Staveley just cracking on with the job in hand! Eagle and Child flooded but ok and Wilfs and the Hawkshead brewery survived unscathed :-).
Bridges are in a bad state closed today but reopened late on

Of course by far and away the most significant impact of the floods is that I now have to cook christmas dinner now the swan at newby bridge is under water. Harrumph.

Things that come to mind are will insurance pay for all the flooded cars and how quick, majority of people need a car to get to work, or tradesmen who have lost use of their vans need to replace them quite fast, along with tools.

If youre not insured because you couldnt afford it, where will you live, and who is going to pay for repairs,to your home.

If youre old or disabled, who is going to help you clean up, move, cook etc,

Do you still have to pay rent and or mortgage if your house is unihabitable.

Will you ever be able to sell your ex flooded home, and if you do will its value plummet.

If the comapany is flooded out you work for, who is going to pay your wages, if theyre not insured for buisness interuption.

and lots more unanswered questions

Keswick is open!

Amos from KMB was on Radio 4 at teatime – came across very well and definitely upbeat. Open for business today!

Staggered at the devastation. Watching the water come over the Glass barriers I was amazed. They must be 7′ high those things. Still looking forward to coming up in two weeks. I have the best reason to spend more money on fine ale now knowing I’ll be supporting the local economy.

Good luck you lot. If anyone can get over this disaster its the stoical Cumbrians!

BBC news has just reported Carlisle police are putting on extra patrols because of the fear of looting !! 😯

immigration isnt helping matters

I don’t know, we’re going to need plenty of builders

Sad to see the thread being turned political

immigration isnt helping matters

😕

fear of looting !!

There were a couple of scrotes nicking stuff on Cockermouth Main St today apparently.

teamhurtmore – Physical geography nerd here too. Those fellsides west of Helvellyn that drain into Thirlmere are forested in parts, but coniferous plantations on steep slopes with thin soil. Deciduous woodland would struggle to establish and even then wouldn’t slow surface run-off and lag time much – especially after autumn leaf fall. It’s no coincidence that ‘our’ floods happen in winter when the trees are bare of leaves. I was wading through two feet of standing water 10 days ago on the River Cocker floodplain, 3 miles upstream of Cockermouth. The Derwent was bankfull for days then and the ground saturated. We then had record amounts of rainfall and gales to bring trees down. The result is no surprise.

We’ve had recent river restoration work here (Whit Beck) – put in after Prince Charles visited after the 2009 floods.

It worked beautifully, slowing down that tributary and using the rivers erosive energy across the floodplain. The new bridge in Lorton worked too – single span – it was right up to the peak of the arch

The old bridge blocked, act as a dam and collapsed – like the Braithwaite and Pooley Bridge ones this time.
My pic from 2009 (BBC pic of the day – go me!)

The defences along the River Cocker in town pretty much contained the water to the confluence with the Derwent in Cockermouth. Last time the Cocker took a short cut right along Main St and if you look back at the footage, you’ll see the strength of the current in 2009, with motor boats struggling against it. This time flooding on the Main St was slow moving and at a much lower level.
Likewise, look at the amount of water those glass-topped walls in Keswick held back!
For me, the EA have done a pretty good job here. Without the recent works, Keswick and Cockermouth would be much worse off and we’d have been lucky to avoid fatalities.

Discussion point – how often in the Lakes do you see rivers held within stone built channels, concentrating the energy of any flood, firing debris downstream to the next arched bridge. Look at the Whit Beck works linked to above, where the river has been released from the stone channel and meanders have been re-instated. The farmer there lost no stock and there’s less bedload/debris than last time. In less than a year, the wildlife benefits are evident.
Let rivers adjust and move and use up energy.
Record rainfall on saturated ground (steep, thin soiled fells) will always give record flooding.
Accept flooding will happen and adapt buildings.
The shops in Cockermouth were warned on Thursday and that warning was increased Friday. Most moved stock and are now sweeping out and mopping the tiled or stone floors they put in after the last flood. They’ll be open before the week is out. It was months last time.
The newly built leisure centre in Workington is a planning cock-up – apparently the developers said that they could engineer out the risk of flooding….
Work with nature and concentrate on integrated solutions. Stop making it a political football – that just wastes resources.
Now get yourselves up here for the best biking, climbing, beer and sausage in England. We’ll be out tomorrow night for soggy singletrack and Loweswater Gold.

Great post boxelder!!

+1

+2 boxelder, great post.
I’ll be up in Ambleside mtbing then onto Daisey’s caffe (and the obligatory mooch round Biketreks of course 😉 ) spending some money in the area on Saturday. They need money putting into the local economy more than ever. Looking at some of the pictures on tv was horrendous (growing up in the area I recognised a lot of images)
However even during the worst of the flooding Cumbrian’s can still make a joke out of it, both these were on a Cumbrian FB page

This lad posted:
Soooo happy I’ve now got my indoor swimming pool. It’s not heated but beggars can’t be choosers!

Nice one Boxelder.

Cheers boxelder. Great post and sentiments

Love the Whit Beck case study.

FWIW, I read that W side of Helvelkyn was being used as a case study for mixing types of trees. Still not enough. Some blog from grasmere shows big landslips higher up on the exposed fell side.

Interested in that pic of the meandering river, which is the natural coarse of events on flat wide valleys, ox bow lakes and such like. However on steeper ground water/rivers will always find the quickest way down. When in flood doesn’t the river attempt to “straight line” its route?

Sorry to upset some people on here but more people ,means more housing means less land to absorb surface water. Ruthin has seen a prime example of in appropriate developement

I mentioned George Monbiot a few days ago. Here’s his opinion in today’s paper.

Flood management

I mentioned George Monbiot a few days ago. Here’s his opinion in today’s paper.

He’s got some good points. However the way he chooses to make them and the timing of it, seemed to put him squarely in the firing line for farmers and businesses who have once again been flooded.

Apparently it’s disrespectful to bring it up while they’re still mopping out their front rooms or it’s disrespectful to blame the farmers who are trying to make a living from the very land that now lies under 2ft of water.

But yes, his point stands, it’s not one solution of building ever higher barriers, it’s a whole raft of measures, some of which people really don’t want to hear. It’s easier to just blame the EA for not building the barriers high enough…

He’s got some good points. However the way he chooses to make them and the timing of it, seemed to put him squarely in the firing line for farmers and businesses who have once again been flooded.

He’s been making these points for quite a while, he even wrote a book that talked about it quite a bit – maybe they should have listened to him…

He was on Radio 4 this morning with some guy from the NFU who basically refused to engage with the points he was making and remained insistent that they needed more dredging and higher walls.

He was on Radio 4 this morning with some guy from the NFU who basically refused to engage with the points he was making and remained insistent that they needed more dredging and higher walls.

A bit like this…

He needs to watch himself…

😀

Monboit mixes the points to maximum advantage not least the 1:100 risk and the whole issue of dredging.

Dredging is not, and never has been, a simple solution and the risk that it solves one problem (improves river capacity in one area) while creating another (increased risks of flooding downstream|) is taught in basic GSCE geog?!? Has anyone suggested it is a cure all?

Now then, form a queue, who wants to engage with THM in the argument nobodies having at the moment?

??

Flooding on this scale used to be described as a “once in 100 years”, or 200 years event. But in Cumbria, where some 30cm of rain fell in 24 hours, this is the third such catastrophe since 2005. Exceptional events are, perhaps, no longer exceptional.

This is simply a misunderstanding or deliberate misuse of statistics. Not an argument at all. Ditto, dredging is not a simple yes/no issue.

And on the ground plenty of debate re dredging including residents who are blaming a lack of dredging as an issue.

??

Flooding on this scale used to be described as a “once in 100 years”, or 200 years event. But in Cumbria, where some 30cm of rain fell in 24 hours, this is the third such catastrophe since 2005. Exceptional events are, perhaps, no longer exceptional.

ever rolled more than one six in a row?

Was just ribbing you but yes he is sensationalising, like his claim that the floods could be avoided all together, total bollocks but then his job is to fill column inches and sell advertising space. Guess what George 100% natural rivers still flood. Catchment landscape management is the key to minimising risk to built up areas though he’s right on that.

You can’t blame people for thinking that the most obvious and established option is the right one though can you? People who aren’t knowledgeable in a field in not knowing latest thinking in field shocka.

According to Monbiot all global climate issues could be fixed by ending sheep farming.

According to Monbiot all global climate issues could be fixed by ending sheep farming.

That’s part of the perception issue – the Lakes has for decades presented itself to tourists as “unspoilt wilderness” so that’s what people imagine it is as they drive through it and there’s all the pretty sheep and fields and little drystone walls. And when they want to get out for a walk there’s all the neat little stone / gravel paths up the hill and down the hill via a cafe or two and it’s all “natural” and “unspoilt”.

Reality is of course that it’s far from unspoilt; while it might still look pretty, it’s been extensively managed and farmed and altered for centuries and every time you put in some upland paths or drain some bog to allow grazing, you’re giving the water one more easy option to come off the hill as fast as possible.

That’s an extremely basic presentation but the problem is far more complex than simply “dredge the rivers”; you need to manage the water from the moment it hits the ground, not just let it get to the rivers then worry about how to deal with it once its 30ft deep and racing along taking trees with it.

Cheers stabiliser!!

Like others, I am just a closet physical geography nerd!!

The review of the past floods and the schematic diagrams/different solutions is interesting – but cant find the link now! and I am hungry…so off for lunch

Even friends of the lake district have dropped the preserve it in aspic mantra these days and their socks are as red as can be. We’re currently paying farmers (a pittance) to farm sheep on the fells when that land could be much more productively used as a carbon/flood water sink. Pay them to manage upland woodlands instead, innit. Harvest it for biomass to give them a crop. winner winner chicken dinner.

Just last week I booked a holiday cottage (with a nice little stream out the back) up a little ravine out the back of Thornthwaite.

I hope its survived ok, the owners havent been in touch yet…

Interesting views Boxelder. Radio 4 had 2 blokes on this morning. One had similar views to yourself, and one had almost polar opposite. Worrying thing was that they both were involved in advising the government.

I agree that we could and should use all sorts of incentives for farmers to diversify, including the value of the land for recreation, conservation and carbon and water sinks.

But, as said above this is massive culture change for landowners, locals and visitors alike.

I also ‘get’ the rewilding stuff and claims, but am confused by how/why/when of it, and if this is still too narrow a view of the world. A ‘true’ value of the land we now have (ie not really ‘natural’) is in many more things than pure, empty wilderness of a bygone age. I think we need a much more pragmatic approach.

Guess what George 100% natural rivers still flood.

Where did he argue that they don’t?

Where did he argue that they don’t?

He specifically said they did, just in a more managed way, with slower build up and release….