After the snow came the snow-melt and the rain - Storm Christoph - and our rivers are under pressure. This was the scene at Hirst Weir yesterday afternoon (Wednesday). The river was just about holding the flow but it was still raining so it may have got worse later. The flats and houses around the old mill on the opposite bank appeared to be so far unscathed but, if I lived there, I'd have been watching and waiting with some trepidation. The water was right up to the decking.
The little footbridge over Loadpit Beck (below), where the beck joins the River Aire, was just passable. (Normally the beck flows under it a good three feet below.)
The level of the river in Roberts Park is my own 'measure'. On Tuesday it was just hitting the edge of the first strip of grass. By Wednesday, as you see below, it had progressed over the footpath, but there's then a low wall that bounds the cricket field and it hadn't yet reached the top of that. In the worst seasons, it can completely cover the field so there's a way to go yet before it reaches that level of awfulness. Let's hope it doesn't this time, as it only brings heartbreak to people lower down the valley, who then inevitably get flooded.
The sensitive Calder valley, where my daughter lives, has so far escaped the worst of it too (as I write this on Wednesday night). So, although the rain is still coming down steadily, I pray the rainfall doesn't exceed the rivers' ability to sweep it away.
Shipley and the River Aire have made it onto the BBC, with an imminent danger of flooding to property and farmland. Cross our fingers, toi-toi-toi.
ReplyDeleteThat last shot is quite dramatic.
ReplyDelete