What flood?

[Deleted]

I was at The George in Piercebridge this morning and took this photograph.



Anyone dropping by for lunch must have wondered what all the fuss was about.

[jacques]

Just proves that the Tees is a spate river. Villages towns beside it go back hundreds of years. Thoes that originally sited the houses knew what the river was capable of so even big floods dont cause grief.

[samvimes]

People talk about record river levels a lot. However, I'm not remotely convinced that the records indicated by the EA website really are records. I've got a sneaking suspicion that they are only indicative of how high the river has been since the modern monitoring equipment was installed. Most of that was put in during the nineties. Strangely, there's not a single river level record older than that.

I'm absolutely convinced that I've seen the Swale at higher levels than the indicated records. However, it will have been during the eighties. I'd narrow it down further to some time in '83/'84 as I was at the then lower school in Richmond, right next to the river.

The one thing that is very obvious to me is that the Dales rivers rise and fall significantly more quickly than they used to. The rivers rise in a way that used to require a fairly unfortunate set of circumstances. They start dropping almost as soon as the rain stops. I don't believe that used to be the case.

[BriC]

The grypes on the moors will account for a lot of that rise and fall

[jacques]

It's a fact that back in the late 70's into the 80's there was a lot of drain installation that took place on the upper moorland areas of the north. Another of those government schemes that were I'll thought out. Hence the result is our rivers flood much faster than they did prior to the drain installation. Hence the moors retain less water than they previously did. Hence our rivers run out of flow much faster in dry summers.

[andy76]

Tbf think we got away lightly it's west Yorkshire ,and Midlands that copped it worst ,the Moors and penines that feed our rivers have had fair bit of rain but nothing out of the ordinary where some places have been swamped .

Come July August we will be praying for flush throughs and similar levels

[pault]

Don't think I would have liked it any worse 😕

[andy76]

Yeah must admit iv been for drive round today and it's dire most places ,god I hate this time of year , never be a winter angler me ,mainly because we don't get crisp cold weather just mild wet windy blast after blast