I think I may need a winch on the car

[tractorman]

OK, it's a typically British obsession but here are a few pictures of today's high tide:



This is the bottom of the road to our house (which is uphill to the right), the "main" road is slightly flooded - though not as much as 1988 as the tide wreck was further up past the speed limit signs.



The road is to the right of the bushes!



The tall wall to the right of the cream house is between six and eight feet high, the farmer moved his car (2002 Jag X-type) just after I took teh picture, but I think the tide had peaked by then!



Just to prove that there is a road there!

The pictures may look bad, but most of the houses are on a hillside and don't get flooded - the "old village" is a little lower, but the houses are still out of harms way. I can only sympathise with those who have had their homes and possessions damaged or destroyed.

Luckily, there were no cars to winch out and no, I wouldn't go into the water with either tractor - it's salt water with all sorts of things floating in it (fence posts, tree branches etc) and I don't intend to ruin either tractor if I can avoid it!

[mach1rob]

We have it bad down here, a couple of pics nabbed from the local paper.

Just to compare, today



Last September

[Mitsuru]

A winch maybe, but snorkels most definitely
Failing that water wings and an outboard motor
we have been lucky here as we are on hilly ground, but the local roads is suffering from
land slip now as the land has never truly dried ou!

[UKJeeper]

I wouldn't go into the water with either tractor - it's salt water with all sorts of things floating in it (fence posts, tree branches etc) and I don't intend to ruin either tractor if I can avoid it!

Same here. I've got all the 'right' equipment on my Wrangler, but i'll be blowed if i'm going to go and play in anything like that anymore. At least not just for fun. I am signing up with the local 4x4 response group to help out if needed, but i'll leave the splashing around in puddles to others.

[tractorman]

My "heating engineer" friend called last night and agreed that the tide was lower than the 1988 one. He lives in the creamy-coloured house shown just to the right of the middle of the second-last photo and said the water was over his wall (so about six feet deep on the road), but hadn't come as far up his garden as it did in 1988. One of his neighbours (the house on the right in that picture) had their car beside the house and the water was lapping at its wheels. Luckily, the house is a foot or two higher than the yard!

One feller who owns a "holiday home" along there bought a Disco just before the '88 hurricane (they had just started building them when he bought it) and he was showing off before the big tide: taking it through when the water was over the road. It had new diffs and gearbox before it was a year old, so he was shouting about poor build quality! We pointed out that nobody around these parts would drive through flooded roads unless they were on a tractor where the mechanical parts were well above the water level because the salt will ruin them. Mind you, one of the local farmers got caught out on a road he thought he knew in the '88 tide - the water was half way up the seat backs and ruined his Volvo 245. How it managed to get through, I'll never know - the air filter was wet to within an inch of the top and the salt water had reached the chrome stripe along the side of the car!! We stripped the insides out, dropped the oil (engine, gear box and back axle - all had water in them) and dried it out with a space heater for a couple of days, but it didn't last much more than a year after that.

I can't really laugh at them though: I was going to town about three years ago (in the Mk4 Golf) and there was water on the road on the other side of a river bridge. I know the road fairly well and saw the water was below the grass verge, so just slowed down to go through. The car suddenly started swaying from side to side and slowed down very quickly! I was lucky to get through without hydraulicing the engine! I kept a few revs on and slipped the clutch to keep moving (very slowly) and the fairly new clutch was slipping for about five or six miles afterwards! I was a bit surprised as, some years earlier, I had gone the other way through that spot in the first Golf (Mk2) and "deeper" water and had no problems!

[JPB]

There's a 4x4 rescue group that's kept busy rescuing grockles from the causeway across from the mainland to Holy Island, mainly farmers' vehicles that aren't road registered are used but a couple of incomers have tried to impress us, the cynical locals, by signing up for the rota and comprehensively wrecking their expensive shopping trolleys.

Long before there was a surfaced crossing though, a fleet of 1930s, ex-military Hillman saloons was kept purely to transport folk over the sands at low tide, when the sea would typically be only about a foot deep. These cars ran specially made wheels with tractor-like spuds instead of tyres and remarkably, in spite of their living in sea water constantly, the fleet was active as recently as the beginnings of the causeway being laid in 1954. Needless to say, the rusting hulks never left the island and although I'm far too young to remember the taxis being in service, I do remember their remains being visible at low water as recently as the early 80s.

Strangely though, in spite of most of the island being only slightly above sea level, its the main railway line that runs along the coast on its way into Berwick and Edinburgh that usually sees any flooding that does result from freakishly big neap tides and thankfully even they haven't reached anyone's home since the 1930s. Source: Dad, who saw such a thing once as a very small child.
What I don't get is how the west coast has started to receive its now expected levels of flooding, it used to be the North sea that was wild and unpredictable. Ah well, every cloud, etc.

Here's the causeway in its default state:



In the grockling season, there'll almost certainly be at least one very new, very wet, very expensive 4x4 - owned by one of said grockles - covered to half way up its windows as its embarrassed occupants stand in one of the white nests along the route.

So why is there so much more water in the west these days and we get only the same amount every year, regardless of the neap tides and the melting of that polar ice? It seems unfair.

[tractorman]

I can't speak for the south west (anything below Blackpool!), but we have always had big tides. There was one in 1967 that nearly flooded a couple of bungalows at Bowness, though that almost led father to court: he said that one had water lapping under the floorboards on "A Canny View" that was recorded in 1968 or so and the owners threatened legal action. Father checked with the BBC and they asked if it was true (it was) and said that the owner didn't have a leg to stand on and that "Auntie can lose films"! Apparently the owner was trying to sell the house (I wonder why) and thought the publicity would be harmful! The irony of it was that, when sitting having my supper at Uni (Teesside) in 1994/5, I was watching "Today's the Day" and there was my father doing a bit about half net fishing. That had been part of the programme. I hadn't actually been watching the telly: my father's voice got my attention - he died in 1988!

Perhaps one reason that we don't get affected badly by the tides is that the estuaries tend to be mudflats or low-lying salt marshes, stretching back a couple of miles - or more - from the Irish Sea (eg Silloth is almost at the mouth of the Solway Firth and the salt marsh almost reaches Carlisle, about eight miles away (as the crow flies). so there is a much larger flood plain for the water to spread over.

Another reason is that it is reported more these days - you can't beat a bit of media hype to start a panic (ask my Nephew's Bulgarian wife). You could hardly go to Carlisle in 2005 when it was flooded - there were too many reporters about! The floods happened in similar conditions: a lot of rain had soaked the flood plain, there were high tides with quite strong winds. More rain came and the flood plains couldn't take it, so the rivers that run through Carlisle burst their banks. There have been new flood defences built since then, but there doesn't seem to be a ban on building new homes on flood plains!

[Luxobarge]

from freakishly big neap tides

Neap tides are never big. Spring tides are though.....

[JPB]

When they're that big during a neap phase, it's freakish. No, nobody wearing that explanation? Thought not.

You are of course correct, I always get these two mixed up, as I do with Amazon and Vanquished. Just blame the disphasia which finds its way from verbal to written stuff at around this time of the week.

Anyway, yes, bloomin' high water.

[mach1rob]

So why is there so much more water in the west these days and we get only the same amount every year, regardless of the neap tides and the melting of that polar ice? It seems unfair.

The Americans