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York floods

Enn49

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The historic city of York, UK has just suffered the worst flood in many, many years on boxing day. Great areas of the city were affected. Many parts of the city were cut off, telephones were cut when water got into the telephone exchange so no broadband either. The village where I live on the outskirts of the city was on severe flood alert but fortunately the rivers peaked without reaching us.

The River Ouse that flows right through the city centre overflowed it's banks due to all the rivers coming down from the Yorkshire Dales being full after all the rain.


A view of the city centre


The cause of much of the flooding was the failure of the barrier at the junction of the Rivers Ouse and Foss

This is how the barrier should look over the quite small River Foss, beyond is the River Ouse


But because the flood waters got into the pumping station they had to open the barrier allowing the River Ouse to flow back up the Foss. The water flowed back up the Foss and into all the small streams that normally feed into it. It was strange to see the stream through our village flowing the opposite way to normal.

This is the result of that barrier being open


Sadly the Jorvik Viking centre has been flooded and may not reopen for about a year. Luckily they managed to move the old Viking finds to safety but the reconstructed Viking village is soaked.


We have just heard too that a 300 year old bridge in a small town just a few miles away has collapsed, splitting the town in two.
 

Kymura

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Thats horrible hun, always breaks my heart when a natural tragedy happens, The Tuscaloosa tornado went through a few years ago and destroyed everything, ran straight through my sister's house so I have complete and total empathy :( Things will get back to normal, it just takes so much and so damn long to get it there .
 

Enn49

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@Kymura We'd just been watching the aftermath of the tornadoes in the States and saying that at least those who have been flooded here still have they're houses even if they've lost there possession but those poor people in the US have lost everything.
 

Kymura

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Yeah, the house I'm in now, same land but new house, we flooded to chest height on my 6' son, lost everything I had inside, some nonsense about the sewage system going down and back flooding so it was raw sewage as well as flood water. Ended up with black mold we couldn't control. Sooo, they tore it down, have to admit to crying like a baby when they tore it down even tho it was tiny as compared to the new place.
Tornado's...unless your there it's hard to envision. I used to watch the news and think how horrible, seeing it first hand put an entirely new spin on things.
 

sym

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@Enn49 . The Kings arms is well under water!. I lived in York for 2 years back in 2005.
Loved living there such a beautiful city.
 

Kymura

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Nono, I'm fine, and my children and kritters were all fine, its you all I'm feeling for, hateful that with all our technology we cant avoid things like this.
these poor folks, Here and there, thats just horrible :(
 

Enn49

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@Enn49 . The Kings arms is well under water!. I lived in York for 2 years back in 2005.
Loved living there such a beautiful city.

The Kings Arms always is, at least they're prepared for it and have been known to let people in through the upstairs windows for a drink.

Nono, I'm fine, and my children and kritters were all fine, its you all I'm feeling for, hateful that with all our technology we cant avoid things like this.
these poor folks, Here and there, thats just horrible :(

Luckily we had warning and I took all the Ts and my snake upstairs so they were ok.
 

kormath

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That's why i'll never leave Idaho :) no tornadoes, no flooding (unless the city fails to clear the winter debris form the gutters like a couple years ago). Forest fires are the big thing here. We had half our town almost evacuated 2 years ago. I could see the fires burning on the hillsides from my son's balcony. The resort towns 20 miles north both were fully evacuated. I had the dumb idea to drive north a bit and get pictures of the fires. It was a 3 hour round trip because of the traffic, and i didn't even go all the way to the next town. Typically can go there and back in 40 minutes unless you got some slow driver in front as there's hardly any passing zones.

Good thing about that fire is we won't have another that close for a decade or more until the trees and other flora grow back enough to provide fuel.
 

Enn49

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That's why i'll never leave Idaho :) no tornadoes, no flooding (unless the city fails to clear the winter debris form the gutters like a couple years ago). Forest fires are the big thing here. We had half our town almost evacuated 2 years ago. I could see the fires burning on the hillsides from my son's balcony. The resort towns 20 miles north both were fully evacuated. I had the dumb idea to drive north a bit and get pictures of the fires. It was a 3 hour round trip because of the traffic, and i didn't even go all the way to the next town. Typically can go there and back in 40 minutes unless you got some slow driver in front as there's hardly any passing zones.

Good thing about that fire is we won't have another that close for a decade or more until the trees and other flora grow back enough to provide fuel.


Those fires and tornadoes would terrify me.
 

kormath

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Fires aren't bad here. Smoke is what gets to you. That was horrible. Took all winter to get the smoke stink out of the house. To many mountains here for the winds to build up a tornado. Worst I've seen was when I lived in the southern part off the state had 60 mph gusts that blew a few roofs apart, knocked a couple dead trees down but that's about it.

Had a storm like that when I was a kid maybe 7 or so. My brother and I put on our coats and held them open to catch the wind and let it slide us down the deck. Then we'd use the railing to drag our way back to the start and do it again. Till grandpa busted us.
 

Enn49

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In the UK we do get tornadoes but they rarely hit built up areas and are no where near as big as the ones in the States. Most fires are on the heather moors where there are hardly any houses.

The rivers are up again in York because of all the rain but thank goodness the army came in and fixed the Foss Barrier so we are safe from major flooding where I live.
 

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