Does flooding change rivers?

[The bad one]

Probably the best fix is to build balancing lakes,that lie relatively low during summer but fill during times of high water,possibly pumping water to reservoirs at times of need,lets not forget we were in a situation of severe water shortage before last October,maybe 14 months or more with hardly a drop here....

Alan rivers did have and do have balancing lakes, they ae called Flood Plains.
There is work being done in Wales, Cumbria, etc with leaky log dams in the uplands. It also needs in my view supplementing with reforestation of large parts of the uplands with deciduous native trees, not coniferous ones. The rootstock acts as one great sponge, storing and releasing water very slowly back into the streams and rills that run down the hills.

Whilst it's true to say peat has the same and possibly more storage capacity, but it's more fragile, easily damaged and prone to run-a-way in heavy rains. Fire is also it's worst enemy burning for weeks underground.

I note the Head of the EA was on R4 this morning stressing the point and other things that we have to stop building on flood plains.....Doh! Stating the bloody obvious there mate!

 

[theartist]

there's the bankside pub in York that has umpteen higher flood levels marked on its internal walls that go back centuries. Hardly an especially reliable gauge, but not one that can entirely discounted.

There's one of these in most towns usually near the bridge, like you say it's a modern phenomena this concept that flooding is worse than ever, but then we live in an age where we are all doomed and someone is to blame

 

[steve2]

Lets not forget that the EA normal river levels charts are way down on what they should be. Many rivers are over abstracted so any excessive rain will raise these rivers above what is seen as normal level.
If I look back at the rivers I fished 50/60 years ago they always flooded across their flood plain but that flood plain is now built on so the water as to go some where, peoples homes.
A couple of years ago the Somerset levels flooded people were surprised that a flood plain flooded.
Same in Lincolnshire where all the land is drained flood plain.

Flooding isn’t something that only happened in the last 20 years it as always happened.

 

[seth49]

The ribble and hodder round change to some degree each winter, when I fished them always had a walk in spring to try and identify any change to the pools with the winter floods.

Some of the worst sudden flooding occurred after cloudbursts associated with large super cell thunderstorms, anyone that’s passed Pendle hill on the A59 nr Clitheroe will have noticed the large gouge out of the hillside.

This occurred in August 1873 I believe, when a large peat bog on top of hill flooded so much it blew out of the hillside taking thousands of tons of peat, Clay and rocks with it, that’s happened on quite a few of the fells round here, too a lesser degree.

In the late sixties a cloudburst over the fells nr dunsop bridge sent a wall of water down the hodder, the local gamekeeper had to run for his life just escaping being swept away, it took the water mains and electric supply out as well, over 200 salmon where picked up of the surrounding fields after that one, and three houses collapsed at the village of Wray.

Worst storm I ever saw was when I lived on the farm, everything went a weird green colour, I’ve never seen rain like it, constant thunder and lightning, it even sent a tornado through a wood about a mile away, flattening a swathe of large trees across the wood.

Went down to the river hodder after, I’ve never seen it as big, the water was coming down the river in big surging waves, the noise from the rocks being swept down the river was deafening, there used to be large sandbanks by the river, these where all swept away.

 

[The bad one]

Yes, when the Ribble Catchment is angry it's bloody angry, that's for sure! Interestingly, the EA up near Stocks Reservoir have been adding mixed sized gravel to the Hodder to keep the conveyor going.

 

[Aknib]

I think at least part of the problem is the general idea that flooding has never been so bad. This is largely reinforced by the EA river level "records". I appreciate that they had to start somewhere, but the fact that there's no record level shown that's from prior to around 1990 gives a false impression. The reality is that there are no earlier records is because that's when the modern level monitors were installed. Earlier genuine records have either gone unrecorded, unremembered or simply unreliably remembered (and therefore discounted).

I've seen the Swale quite a bit higher than the current record suggests it has ever been. There's no way I can put an accurate measurement figure on it, but walls and buildings are rather obvious gauges. Due to circumstance, I can even narrow the memory to a school year of Sept 82 to July 83. Likewise, there's the bankside pub in York that has umpteen higher flood levels marked on its internal walls that go back centuries. Hardly an especially reliable gauge, but not one that can entirely discounted.

People believe that its never been as bad. They are told that's the case, they want to believe it's true. If you swallow that fib, it's very easy to believe that things are worse since large scale dredging stopped. When proper records don't go back further than the 90s and even living memory doesn't reliably exceed 75 years or so, this is what you get.

I'd certainly agree with that, I can remember far worse flooding along the Trent Valley during the late 70's to early 80's as I helped my late father carrying stock from his premises beside the Trent.

What I do wonder, though, is if these particularly high floods are becoming more frequent?

Certainly the pattern over the last twenty years would suggest so but again how would that compare, frequency wise, over a much longer period of time?

One news article early this morning was covering the Severn floods in and around Shrewsbury and another area that I'm familiar with and they mentioned that this was the fourth 'Once in a hundred years' flood to have occurred in the last twenty years.

I don't trust, without question, what I see, hear and read in the news but I would have thought that there was some sort of statistical data to be able to make that particular claim regarding the frequency.

 

[sam vimes]

I'd suggest that there's a perception that the floods are more frequent and a bit higher on average. However, I'm not entirely convinced about either being entirely true. One thing that does seem far greater is the media coverage and interest. I remember fairly significant local floods failing to make much of a dent in local tv coverage, let alone national. I doubt it would be the case now. I'd also not underestimate the role that mobile phones and social media platforms play. Good photos and video posted to Facebook and twitter can raise awareness very rapidly in a way that just wasn't possible as little as ten years ago.

 

[theartist]

Shrewsbury is currently a good example of flooding then and now, the river there is channelled through the town, but it's no surprise that the old town centre is up a steep hill close to the river but far too high to flood and never will. There's been dwellings there for many thousands of years with the security the river offers on the basis you don't build too close.

The stupidity of those who build on flood prone land and those who buy such houses would not be lost on our ancestors who perhaps were wiser than we'll ever realise. Anybody for a premium waterside vista?

 

[108831]

I can remember(just)when i had just got into match fishing,I was lying second in the points cup in October,the guy leading wasnt noted for his winter prowess,so I felt reasonably confident of overtaking his small lead,all the matches were on the river Ouse,we never fished another match,early seventies I think,the river hardly came back within its banks long enough to have a cast,this winter,climate change or not,is a total fluke,last winter we hardly had a rise in level worthy of the name,leaving weed to run riot through the next year,this year the bottom must be virtually clean,British weather is nothing but variable and inconsistent,look back in your memory banks to those four days or so where it was 30° plus with record temperatures,seems distant now....

 

[silvers]

I agree with the scientific consensus for anthropogenic climate change. Having said that - the weather this winter can't be directly ascribed to it - although the trend data can be.

I remember as a teenager the roads on the Gt Ouse valley where we lived (Harrold, Felmersham, Radwell) flooding for prolonged periods every winter. That's why they sport foot causeways at 3ft or so above the road level. It used to be great fun pushing drowned vehicles out of the floods!

 

[theartist]

I remember as a teenager the roads on the Gt Ouse valley where we lived (Harrold, Felmersham, Radwell) flooding for prolonged periods every winter. That's why they sport foot causeways at 3ft or so above the road level. It used to be great fun pushing drowned vehicles out of the floods!

You see a lot of these round the country, usually by pinch points like bridges, these river crossings must be thousands of years old, It makes you realise that historical weather data really only includes the last century or so and is under 5% of what it could be.

It would be like us judging fish stocks by what we caught this month