FLOODLINE : 0845 988 1188
Updated July 2007
Environment Agency's new FLOOD MAPS are now available. Enter your postcode and see what the RISK OF FLOODING is around your property, or check out other locations. Use a POSTCODE FINDER to locate places: some offer free searches each day rather than having to register. Below is an image of the area around the school where I teach. Oops.
NEW FOR JUNE: FLOODING IN YORKSHIRE June 2007
NEW FOR JULY: FLOODING IN JULY 2007
On the 16th of August 2004, 52 years to the day after the Lynmouth Floods in NorthDevon, a FLASH FLOOD hit the North Cornwall village of BOSCASTLE. The BBC NEWS covered the event, with some links to other pages on the event, and sites which have information about the area. The FLASH FLOOD damaged buildings and swept 50 cars away....
See below for some BOSCASTLE LINKS
Will this be the 'new' flooding CASE STUDY that will be used and immortalised for years to come ?
YOU DECIDE...
York is a city which is often hit by flooding. The YORKSHIRE POST has good coverage of local flooding and can be 'read' online - very useful for ex-pat Tykes like myself. 'You can always tell a Yorkshireman . . . but you can't tell him much.' This has been added to with other materials. There are more PICTURES of flooding in 1999 in North Yorkshire here.
If your house has been flooded, it might be worth following the advice about what to do BEFORE YOU MOVE BACK IN. Once you've been flooded, there's also an excellent site on REPAIR AND RESTORATION here to give advice on getting your house back to the way it was before the floodwater arrived. It's difficult to get across to the students that a flood brings a lot more into your house than just water. I have a video called 'Floods of tears' on the 1998 Easter floods which is quite effective for this purpose.
The King's Arms in York is a frequent victim of any rise, and the landlord is well used to it. A load of photos on flooding in York are available from the BOOTHAM school site, a school which is situated in York. They also have an excellent GA lecture available - see below..
York and Pickering were also hit by flooding in August 2002 following some very high rainfall figures which in some places provided more than a month's worth of rain in less than 24 hours. I was in North Yorkshire at the time, and my new YORK FLOODING page has details on the August 2002 flooding, including some pictures of the clean up outside the King's Arms. Now with some updated links (September 2003)
Some FLOODS 2000 stuff here. Demountable flood barriers have been trialled at Bewdley: a place affected by flooding last year. These have been used in the Netherlands for many years.
Not UK, not 2000, but a good site on the CORBIERES FLOODS in France here. Some 'good' pictures of the flood damage.
Some useful information on RIVER FIELDWORK from a Blackpool school here.
Go to the Bootham school site and look at the excellent online lecture by Hydrologist Mike Stokes. The lecture is one given to the local GA association and has some excellent maps, photos and text which could be made into a useful lesson with a bit of adaptation, or you could produce a question sheet to use with it. Go HERE for the index of slides. Recommended.
For images of Shrewsbury being flooded by the River Severn in November 2000, go HERE. You can use them in your project or website as long as you credit the webmaster of the site, and there are some good pictures on several pages to use. The name of the JPG gives a clue as to its subject matter. Another gallery of photos is to be found on the SHROPSHIRE site.
Flooding in PRAGUE also hit the news in August 2002. The worst floods in a century caused thousands of people to flee their homes. The floods were recorded as they happened at 2 sources in particular:
PRAGUE DAILY and RADIO PRAGUE.
Let's hope the Staropramen brewery escapes. The BBC have a whole series of reports on their news site, which has recently been rearranged.
A MODULE ON THE WATER CYCLE
http://techalive.mtu.edu/meec/module01/title.htm
Thanks to Terry Jones for letting me know about this site. It's got some lovely animations to take students through the processes involved in the Drainage Basin water cycle, and in particular has an excellent animation to show what a WATERSHED is, which is always a tricky thing to explain.
Check the new floodplain risk maps on the floodplain section of the ENVIRONMENT AGENCY site. They can tell you whether your home is at risk from river or tidal flooding. (See also the image at the top of the page....) They also produce a rather nice little booklet called 'Flood Products': Using flood protection products - a guide for homeowners. There is a growing market for these products. It's produced in association with CIRIA.
In September 2001 (and possibly again since then), a number of households in King's Lynn received a special letter. I have a copy of one, and it's a thin laminated plastic sheet complete with a hole at the top so that it can be hung up somewhere as a reminder. There was no envelope, and a Royal Mail franking mark on the top.
The letter said:
"Dear Householder,
This is a waterproof letter. It has come through your letterbox because the Environment Agency has identified that your home is in an area at risk from flooding."
It then went on to describe the need for a flood plan to prepare the household for the eventuality of a flood. These came under a series of headings:
CALL UP
CHECK UP
BLOCK UP
MOVE UP
WISE UP
How can water enter your house ? How can you stop this happening ?
See the NEW LYNMOUTH FLOOD page
Remarkably, the floods of the 16th of August claimed no lives. A 3m wall of water forced its way through the village causing tremendous damage running into millions of pounds. This incident may well become the 'new Lynmouth' as regards GCSE etc. case studies. Of course the incident which 'grabs' the pupils is the one which is best, even if it's perhaps not the most recent. A number of websites have already proved themselves useful resources. A search in the archives of all the major news sites should also produce a range of resources.
Laurie H has some useful PICTURES already available.
Try the SOUTH WEST 999 site for more information from the emergency crews who attended the scene. There are a series of pages which show the scene as the crews began to arrive, and the
BOSCASTLE CORNWALL has some useful images and information.
THIS IS CORNWALL is a local site which has links to 70 articles in the local paper. Local papers and news sections of the BBC are a useful place to find local resources.
A book has now been published by WILLOW PRESS. It's available online at £4.99 (+ £2.50 p&p) - also a special issue of the Meteorology magazine was published.
The MET OFFICE have also published information relating to the statistics of the rainfall that night on their site HERE.
BOSCASTLE information also available at the RGS GEOGRAPHY IN THE NEWS.
It is also the subject of a sample issue of KEYFILE, which was available from the GEO PROJECTS site for a time. Why not subscribe ?
A superb COSTING THE EARTH programme broadcast on Radio 4. Thanks to the excellent listen again feature I managed to catch this programme, and it may still be on the website if you check. On the same day I also caught the excellent 'Christmas in Boscastle' on BBC News 24.
Various excellent information extracted from the programme:
Weather report for the day of the flood...
"Scattered showers will begin to form during the morning, becoming heavy in places by the afternoon".
Catchment prone to flash flood was hit by a bad storm. Weather is becoming more extreme and intense.
Very thin soils.
Hard rock.
Steep catchment. Very steep slopes and the river closes in and gets narrower.
River Jordan, and River Valency are the 2 main rivers, which meet below the Wellington Hotel. Floor of room above the bar collapsed.
Water level was up to the top of the windows in Marine Terrace behind the hotel.
Several rivers meeting in narrow valley floor, and then on down into the harbour, which has a breakwater.
All 3 rivers in the basin went into flood.
Would have been overland flow in the fields higher up the catchment due to the intensity.
At least 100 cumecs during the flood - normally between 1 and 2 cumecs. 100 times the usual flow within 20 minutes. Very intense rainfall cell hit the catchment.
Layer of saturated air about half a kilometre deep. This was a particularly rare occasion called: CONVERGENCE. Large set of thundery showers moved in from ocean and met offshore winds. Forced the moist saturated air to rise and produce tremendous potential for rain.
River rose very quickly: rose about 8 inches in 2 hours, then 5 feet in around 20 minutes, meaning around a 6 foot rise within the hour.
Steep cliffs. Storm cells went spinning off the cliffs and generated uplift. Cliffs increased the rainfall.
Debris dams likely to be breaking in the upper half of the catchment - produced the wall of water which people saw coming down through the village. Blockages (trees etc.) hold up the water for a while, and a lake builds up behind, this then bursts and a surge of water comes down the valley - happened during the Lynmouth flood.
Top bridge parapet collapsed soon, and cars from the car park went over the bridge.
Graham King, local Coastguard observer was convinced that there were people in the cars that were being 'tossed around like cardboard boxes'. Hazard lights were on, and thought there were people in them. Cars were hitting the rooves of buildings.
Need to reduce VULNERABILITY in the future, which is why the rebuilding involves constructing a huge conduit. There is a much wider river channel built in LYNMOUTH.
Can we engineer the town in order to stop the event happening again ? Walls can be built, but they are ugly. Rivers which are diverted can revert to their original source. Need to protect people and property to reduce the risk: raise electrics, and use more flood resistant materials.
People could learn basic water rescue techniques. Create a community which can deal with such events.
People are positive about the future.
You could probably produce something similar for the particular flood event you want to use as your case study.