storm

Storm Bert

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Yesterday, Storm Bert came to visit us, and delivered quite a lot of snow, followed by significantly more rain.

In some respects, we were lucky that temperatures rose as quickly as they did yesterday, as that later rain could have been more heavy snow. As it was, once the snow started to thaw and the gritters and snowploughs were able to get out, we were able to get on and do most of the things that we would normally do on a Saturday.

However, the rapid snow melt and heavy rain could cause some more problems. There’s flood alerts for the River Calder and River Ryburn in Sowerby Bridge. We’ve seen the Calder rise steadily over the day and are keeping our fingers crossed that it doesn’t result in a repeat of Storm Eva at the end of 2015. There’s been a lot of flood defence work that has taken place in the (almost) nine years since then, including Slow the Flow, a project to boost natural flood defences in upland areas to prevent the rivers from being inundated during storms. Alas, further up the valley, the new multi-million pound flood defences weren’t enough to stop flooding in Todmorden and Mytholmroyd, although it hasn’t been as bad as 2015 or 2020 so far.

It doesn’t help that we had snow earlier in the week, followed by persistent cold weather. There was a reasonable snow fall on Monday night, which by the time it snowed again on Thursday was still lingering on the ground. More snow fell yesterday but it’s almost all gone now. Meteorologically speaking, November is considered an autumn month in the northern hemisphere, so to have this much snow before winter has ‘officially’ started is concerning. And this is the second named storm of the year, too. This isn’t ‘normal’ weather by any existing definition, and I hope it doesn’t become the new ‘normal’.

At least, unlike with Storm Lillian in August, we didn’t get a power cut this time.

Storm Lilian

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On Friday, the UK was visited by Storm Lilian, the twelfth storm of the season (which runs until the end of this week). And it took out our electricity supply.

I was all ready to start my working day at home, when my screen went black. I use a laptop, so that was still running, but with no internet and a rapidly depleting battery. This was around 8:30am.

Thankfully, almost instantly a text from Northern Powergrid, the privatised company that runs the local electricity distribution network, informed me that they were aware of the problem. But a fix wasn’t likely until 10am, and August is my busiest month of the year at work. As rush hour had passed, I could be in my office in half an hour if I drove, so I got in the car and drove to work.

This turned out to be the right decision, as when I got to work, another text arrived, this time advising it would be 6pm before the power would be back on. As it was, everything was up and running again by 1pm, but it’s been a very long time since I’ve known a power cut last for over four hours. It turns out we were one of around 36,000 people without power in the Northern Powergrid area. Thankfully, nothing in our fridge or freezer spoiled.

Whilst we do have a massive battery in our cellar, linked to our solar panels, this doesn’t automatically kick in if there’s a power cut. Instead, we have two dedicated sockets that run off the battery. I did try running an extension cable from there to the fridge-freezer, but it didn’t seem to do anything, so I plugged the fridge-freezer back into the mains and left for work.

As mentioned, Storm Lilian is the twelfth named storm of the season, and it’s the first time since the storms were named in 2015 that we’ve reached the letter L. The season ends this Saturday and so we probably won’t experience Storm Minnie, but the fact that we’ve had this many storms over the past 12 months is rather worrying. Is this going to be the new normal with climate change, and are we going to experience more power cuts like this one?

Flooding in Sowerby Bridge

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Yesterday, saw some of the worst flooding in living memory in our home town of Sowerby Bridge. This report from the BBC shows some photos, and the Sowerby Bridge photo is taken from the flats in which Christine and I lived in until we moved in September. We lived in a third-floor flat, and so we would not have been directly affected, but the plant room for the apartments was flooded and that might’ve knocked out our electrical supply. The car park was almost completely submerged as well, so if our car had been parked there it would have almost certainly been written-off, as it would have been inundated by the flood waters.
Fortunately, our new home is on significantly higher ground and so isn’t at risk of flooding.

The main roads in and out of the town were blocked due to the flood waters, and so we had to drive along the back roads to get out. And although the rain has now stopped, I expect it’ll be some time today before the water recedes. There will be many people whose homes will have been flooded, and some businesses will have a race against time to re-open for the new year.

Elsewhere, Hebden Bridge has been badly hit again, after sustaining devastating floods in the summer of 2012. It’s going to be a grim new year for many in the Calder Valley.

You can donate to the Calder Valley relief fund here.