So you may have heard on the news about the severe flooding that hit Britain last week, with thousands of homes flooded out due to the large tidal surge, flooding towns all along the east coast. This was the largest coastal surge to hit the North Sea coastline in the past 60 years, brought about by combination of three factors all occuring at once, a lethal combination. Spring tides, the highest astronomical tides of the lunar cycle, combined with a low pressure system and very high winds across the North Sea (up to 80mph in places) to form a massive tidal surge, pushing over flood defenses and destroying flood banks in many areas. People were evacuated all along the East coast, thousands of homes were flooded, power was knocked out in many locations, lamp posts ripped up, walls torn down, and general destruction along the coast. And it was no different here!
Being located in the 'V' where the River Ouse and the River Trent meet to form the Humber, we were on flood warning quite early on, although it wasn't expected to reach Whitgift (where I'm living), although later on we were upgraded to flood warning as the tidal surge began. People living in Goole and in some villages along the Trent were evacuated, and Whitby, Hull and Boston were all badly affected by the flooding. As we weren't on flood alert until late in the day, we thought we were relatively safe, although we did move the Konik ponies to higher ground on the reserve to ensure that they would be ok as we expected the reserve would get very flooded, being right in the junction where the two rivers meet. We didn't expect it to be quite so bad as it was though... I got a phone call at about 7:45pm on Friday, when the tide was almost at its highest, to say that the the water was pouring over the floodbank, and heading towards the village, and that we probably had about 20 minutes to get everything upstairs before the waters came flooding in...
So we moved things upstairs, and got prepared to turn off the electrics and retreat upstairs at the first sign of flooding. Luckily though, the waters seemed to bypass Ousefleet and Whitgift and carried on past us! Unfortunately Reedness, the next village along, got hit very badly when part of the floodbank collapsed and the waters came rushing in, with walls destroyed and homes flooded, as the water reached up to car windows on its way through and out across the fields behind the village. So we got off very lightly really, our side of Whitgift wasn't touched at all, and the villages this side of the river weren't too badly affected. The floodwaters in Reedness have now subsided, although debris still litters the pathways and gardens.
The reserve however did get pretty badly battered, with waters reaching halfway up some of the hides, coating everything in mud and silt, pathways underwater and debris everywhere. Tomorrow the clean up begins, a task that will take quite a while by the sounds of it! Some things have been rescued from the visitor centre, but a lot of the stock was totally ruined. However, I am pleased to report that all four of the Konik ponies are ok. We got a bit worried about them when we couldn't find them on Friday night when all of the flooding happened, but as it turned out they had just jumped the fence in a bit of a panic. They got separated in pairs somehow during the flood, but they have all been relocated and moved out of the reedbed to somewhere a bit safer. They'll be checked over by the vet at some point this week as well, just to make sure they're fine. I'll post up some photos of the reserve next week, but we're hoping to be open again by next weekend. We're out of danger now though, so should be fine from here on out!
For more info and pictures (for those of you that haven't already seen them), click on the following links:
BBC News Report - General overview and explains more about tidal surges
BBC Local News - Yorkshire
Some photos - scroll to bottom of page
