Along with many areas along the Thames, Kingston upon Thames is flooding. This is the tow path, or at least it runs from the line of the fencing on the left as it is currently under 2-3 feet of water.
I came across those two chaps from the Environment Agency and a really impressive remote controlled boat. They have travelled from Kent to help local officers by gauging the flow and volume of water to assist in predicting possible future flood areas. The boat is a state of the art remote ARC (Acoustic Remote Control) boat filled with digital sensors which relays data back to a laptop which interprets the information. They have been working flat out over the past week and were really pleased to explain about what they were doing and to show me the boat controls and data received. At 11.30am the river was flowing at 2.5-meters a second (it is normally 1-meter a second) and the volume of water was an astounding 476 cubic meters.
It's amazing how good "they" at predicting what is going to happen to water levels - but they struggle to control it. Luckily my village had work done after 2007 but it is still scarey
The extent of the flooding is shocking, and one gets a good idea of it in this shot. I'm glad info is being collected--the information about how it's done is really interesting. The water looks so dangerous, especially for little children; I hope there are no drownings.
@annemary It's getting close round here but luckily we're about 5-minutes walk from the river so on slightly higher ground. I felt a bit sort for them as they are the guys on the ground (not decision makers) and they have had a lot of grief from some people. There were quite a few men walking by who had wistful expressions that they were being paid to take a remote controlled boat out on the river (boys toys and all that!!)
@tristansmum It is very dangerous and sadly a local dog called Lily got washed away on Christmas Eve and was found a long way down stream in Chiswick just a week ago - very sad. People have been killed over the past few weeks, not many but a few and obviously a few too many. Not too get too political but our government want to go ahead with a railway improvement system called HS2 which will cost billions of pounds and will decrease the journey time between London and Birmingham by 20 minutes (currently 1 hour 24 minutes). A lot of people including myself think the money could be spent more effectively helping shore up flood defences around the country and repairing the coastal damage… so endeth todays political statement!! ;-)
@emmadurnford I'm so sorry to hear about Lily, and about the deaths over the past weeks. I absolutely agree with you about how that money should be spent--it's more important to save lives than time, especially when it;s only 20 minutes.
You do find out interesting information. I haven't been down to this bit of the river since it got so bad - that really is fast (though we didn't really need numbers to know that). Quite agree about HS2
February 13th, 2014
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