This rain

Whether or not this is all due to "climate change", we have to start spending time and money on the consequences and then on prevention. If the Dutch could do it hundreds of years ago why are today's lot so incompetent?

Flickety, we were living in York then. I still have the book of photos produced by the York Press to sell for flood relief.
My husband had an appointment one day at Pinderfields in Wakefield, but there was only one road open, so we cancelled as we needed to get back for the guests' breakfasts the next morning.
We were getting emails from Australia and USA to ask if we were okay, but we were on a hill.

The Somerset Levels are similar to the Fens but I don't think they have the same defences - sluice gates, permanent pumping, barrages and high banks - that we have. Dutch expertise was responsible for the original draining of the Fens and modern flood defences installed as a result of the 1953 floods. Everywhere you go here there are signs of flood prevention which benefits large scale arable farming. I suppose that up until now grazing pasture and meadows in Somerset have survived annual flooding but it must be devastating for farmers and home owners to have to endure what the current weather has thrown at them.

The Somerset levels have particular problems as the main rivers that drain it are tidal and excess water can only be discharged when the tide is very low. It is all also a very short distance from the sea. So there is very little chance of run off. what the

They have not had such bad rain for years. To pump water away you have to have a somewhere that is lower to pump it out to.
See this info.

www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/10601978/Why-do-the-Somerset-Levels-flood.html
It is likely that very heavy rainfall itself brings a lot more silt into the rivers as it is running off the fields, which is probably why the environment agency say a lot of dredging in advance is only a partial solution to the problem.

Dredging is only a partial solution. Another solution which is working here is to neglect the upper un-navigable reaches and let them get messy. Trees are actually felled across the river in addition those falling naturally. The river gets it's bends back, spreads out and widens and holds the water back. Very good for wildlife too.
But our rivers have been dredged for navigation for centuries and the spoils put on the banks. Until two or three years ago we had a decade of hardly any dredging and they took the dredging away so the banks deteriorated too. Luckily for us things have been sorted here now. Hopefully 'lessons have been learned' (hate that expression) and Somerset etc will get their turn.

Those Somerset river drains have been made stupidly straight if they had sensible meanders and proper flood plains it would catch and slow down the water flow. Rivers are supposed to do this. Let them flood in the winter and deposit new nutrient rich sediment onto the fields.
It would also mean that the regular deposits of new sediment would, over the years, act to raise the level of the fields. Right now it is being wasted by just flowing out into the Bristol Channel. More reed beds and water meadows are needed.

durhamjen DS lived off the Leaman Road in one of the Victorian terrace houses. After his house was sandbagged, a while later they were all told to evacuate as the road was expected to flood. He went back to his girlfriend's flat near the hospital. He said it was the weirdest night he has ever experienced. They went out for a walk and the city was in total silence, there was no traffic, hardly anyone on the streets, everybody was just hunkering down and preparing for the worst. The main road near them was lined with coaches and ambulances waiting to evacuate all the patients from the hospital in case that was threatened by floods.

As it was the water did not go rise to the heights feared and his house, hospital etc were never in danger, but, for him, it was a night not to be forgotten.

The Somerset levels used to be under water and were drained by Dutch engineers brought in hundreds of years ago; they are below sea level. But if they could drain them all that time ago, how come, with today's technology and knowhow, they could not keep on top of drainage even if the rain was in excess of normal? Dredging of the Tone, the Parrott and the ditches is not the only answer, but surely we have more resources these days? The Severn itself is becoming silted up as it isn't dredged any more, and the rain and storms just bring more and more silt down the rivers which feed into the Severn.
Perhaps the Environment Agency just thought that the easiest option was to let it all go back under the water. They are more interested in spending money on nature reserves than saving good, productive farmland.

I look out over the Severn and I regularly see a dredger.

That's interesting! How far up is it dredging, Galen?

Just found this

http://www.gloucestershireecho.co.uk/good-luck-planning-helped-Tewkesbury-avoid-worst/story-20502080-detail/story.html

It's raining. Again. Where is the bright sunny morning we were promised?

Our local river was dredged to give the villages in the valley some relief from floods but only a certain stretch was done so the 'undone' bits still flood and we still have horrendous jams in and out of our village which is the only one with no flooded roads.

I feel so sorry for people who have their homes flooded - that doesn't happen here (or rarely) and we all moan about detours caused by flooded roads. We really have nothing to complain about.

Sorry Margaret we got your sun.

Ha, we did get some Nfk, but too late to go out. Now black clouds overhead again.

I feel sorry for them, it is not just water or even dirty water, it is often sewage as well.

Rain, what rain- we have been dry here for a whole 48 hours but that was not the forecast. There is a lot more to come I believe.

I agree, having sewage floating throughout one's flooded house must be hell on earth.

Where are you - I'm moving!

We are not flooded thank goodness, but not so long ago the drain just UP from us was blocked- apparently someone nearby had been putting those "soluble" toilet wipes down the loo, it says on the packet that you can, but apparently not because they block the drains.

But every local news has extensive coverage of the Levels.

Dredging the Somerset levels rivers would relieve flooding because they are relatively short rivers going directly into the sea. Sometimes dredging inland rivers, like the middle Thames valley where I live, does make flooding worse down stream, but that's because of the distance between dredging and sea.

A geologist from the British Geological Survey was on the radio this morning saying that the aquifers below most of Britain that were nearly empty five or six years ago are now at their highest level ever. They had figures for one bore hole going back to 1830 and this year has provided the highest reading ever.

There is more rain due tomorrow and more flood alerts. Keep safe everyone.

Flickety, we lived on Haxby Road, which is the next road away from the hospital. It intersects with Wiggington Road, and all the terraces in between the two roads are flats, so he was probably not far away from our guest house. If they ever went to the launderette on Haxby Road, we lived two doors away from that.
We had been going to buy a guest house between Marygate car park and the river, but my dad warned us that the car park often flooded. There were floodgates at the bottom of Marygate even then. Fortunately York has been floodproofed more than other places.
We always knew when other areas were bad because York floods would not get mentioned on the news. At the moment York is sandbagged and the highest flood warning is on the Ouse at Naburn Lock. Not many people realise that the Ouse is tidal up to York.
There are lots of areas in Yorkshire called ings, which I thought meant floodplain. However, I have just looked the word up in my dictionary, and it's not there! How strange.

You are right about the meaning of 'ings', but probably looking in the wrong kind of dictionary. You need a dictionary of place name elements or the following site listing Yorkshire place name elements of Norse origin. www.viking.no/e/england/yorkshire_norse.htm

Just spoke to Somerset resident, apparently the river Parrett used to be about 15ft. deep but has been allowed to silt up until it is only 2-3ft. deep.

And drainage ditches should be straight, surely, for faster more efficient drainage?

But I had not really realised that Ings was a dialect word, Flickety. I thought everybody knew what it meant!
Where does that put Ings Road? Under water?

Ing is a surname as well, isn't it?

Still pouring with rain here, but not windy. Yet