6.02.2024 Man the lifeboats?

 ~o~

Tuesday 6th 44F/7C. Dark, wet and windy. A month's rain is supposed to have fallen by this evening. Up to 2" or 50mm total. Some flooding is expected. We are getting 2mm or <1/8" of rain per hour. Meanwhile California, The Sunshine State, is getting a whole inch or 25mm of rain per hour.

Up at 6am after quite a reasonable night. Only one trip to the fire bucket at 4am.  

 7.00 63F/17C in the room. The stove can wait.

 Looking down on the flooded wood and back gardens.

 8.45 Raining. Stove lit. I can see the sky reflected on the floodwater on the back field through the window. Worse than anything before. The phone camera wouldn't focus on the background. It is raining hard.

 A quick burst of online homework later: Zoom first and then tap the touch screen. To force the camera to focus on the desired area. Job done. Not great, but I can't get out on the field to be clear of my own trees. Because of the fence and very marshy ground. 

 The water is right up to the boundary out of sight to the left. The parking area has puddles. From water running down the gently sloping drive. 

The view from my northern boundary towards the new drive. It is impossible to avoid the low hanging trees.

 I walked around to the other side of the flooding. Which lies below the new drive on the back field. The woods and neighbours' back gardens are flooded. All the fields are flooded. The beck has risen well above the 40cm drainpipe level. As I feared it might once the sheer scale of the earthworks became obvious. 

 All my clothes were wet in the time it took me to capture 100 photographs. It was difficult to take pictures which showed the true scale of the flooding. I took my 50-200 lens. Which acts as a 100mm telephoto even at the short end. I should have taken the 12-60mm.

 Flooding is reported over Jylland and elsewhere. With town centres flooded and sandbags protecting their doors. Home owners are being subjected to the wash from cars driving through the flooded streets. The rain is expected to continue until after 6pm locally. It sounded quite heavy on the greenhouse roof as I collected more logs just now. The weather radar shows very heavy rain over us.

 17.30 Returning from a shopping trip to another village. Where I had a chat, in English, with two lovely, ladies. I had been informed by a contact at the museum that one of the ladies was English. The other was much travelled and had lived and worked in England. Today was the first time I had dared to introduce myself. We ended up chatting for an hour. They both liked my Morris Minor. A crosswind was blowing hard where the road was unprotected.

 The light was fading but the flooding on the back field looks worse than ever. It will take some time to run off the sodden landscape. Flooding has occurred in several Danish towns and cities. One place had already recorded 60mm of rain this morning and it was still falling. More rainfall records are broken going back over 180 years. Meanwhile, this week's, green-washing, climate minister is having his empty claims torn to shreds by the real experts. As usual it is untouchable farming which is the major sinner. 

 Dinner was fish fingers, chips and tomatoes. No pictures.

 

~o~