Calmness can be startling. The tranquil Ouse, gently flowing as it usually does, with a boat moored at Marygate Landing, viewed through the arches under Scarborough Bridge. I see this scene a lot, but it seemed remarkable after the recent floods. I can’t offer a comparison image, as the path I was walking on was underwater during the floods. I could only stand on the other side of the floodgates and walls and watch the brown water rushing past.

The river brought to York vegetation from miles away, and left piles of twigs and branches at points where its flow met resistance, as at Scarborough Bridge.

Smaller obstacles collected their own less bulky debris. The Ouse doesn’t care that these paths have been named “Judi Dench Walk” and “Joseph Rowntree Walk”. It leaves its mess in their riverside railings just the same.

Another barrier at the end of Marygate caught tree trunks not captured by the upstream bridges.

A sign of a return to normality: the ice cream van has arrived on the muddy Marygate Landing.

These rudbeckia in the Museum Gardens normally have green leaves. The river left its mark here too.

The mud on the riverside paths is eventually cleaned away after the floods. While it remains, on a sunny October Sunday, the debris from the river’s flow has captured the imprint of our human movement. We’re down here again running, walking, cycling, as soon as the river retreats.

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We have a new river since 2000, an endless stream of information. In 2004, Facebook arrived. In 2006, Twitter. In 2007 Apple released the first iPhone. Then there are people like me with websites and blogs.

The drama of the flooding Ouse created in turn another flood – of comment and images via the web. A lot of information to wade through, an occasionally wonderful but often wonky world. Photos taken hurriedly on smartphones giving the impression that not only was York flooded, but it was weirdly tilted and perhaps sliding off the planet altogether.

I observed via Twitter the rising concern, as local businesses and Visit York tried to clarify that most of York city centre was normal and not underwater. My own website search stats showed that people were looking for information on particular buildings or streets. One asked ‘Is Micklegate flooded’. Looks funny to York folk, but not surprised they were anxious and asking. Twitter, Facebook, every photo sharing site was filled with this flood of information about the #yorkfloods.

It all looked dramatic, and, like the river, it didn’t always respect boundaries. It’s rather disconcerting when complete strangers point a camera at you, when you’re going about your business, an ordinary person. We tend to forget this. Taking photos and putting them on the web may be a modern phenomenon, but other aspects of the viewing of this flood are deeply traditional. Gawping at other people’s misfortune – we’ve always done that.

A couple of days ago I was in town and thought I’d see whether the flood levels were dropping, by Lendal Bridge, before I headed up Coney Street. At the end of the bridge, by Lendal Tower, a line of people looking over, down to the slope leading to the tower and the house alongside it. I was curious too, and looked down, as two men struggled through the floodwater with a large rectangular object. Their TV. They had a load of stinking river in their house, and they were having to deal with this while an audience watched.

One of the men carrying the TV looked up momentarily. I wasn’t taking photos, so I saw properly his face, and his expression, as he waded through the brown water. I felt ashamed for looking, for being a passing spectator, someone who won’t be there taking up the carpets and dealing with the stink.

He looked tired and resigned and also a bit troubled by our gawping down at him. So I moved away and stood on the bridge a little further along. Instead I took the rather less dramatic image above, of the debris caught in railings near that house. Twigs and other natural things making a rather pleasing pattern, studded with the ugly trash of cans and bottles thrown in the river.

The flood of tweets and uploaded images has subsided, and we’re waiting for the grubby floodwater to do the same, though as can be seen from the photo above, anyone who had this in their house has a lot of cleaning up to do. Whether Twitter and the like will be full of pictures of the rubbish, mud and sewage left behind remains to be seen.

How we saw it then

The archive section of the Press website has many articles on the 2000 floods, including one report about how the events were represented on this newfangled internet thing: “If ever there was an example of how important and useful the Internet can be, this is it.” (The capital letter on ‘Internet’ and ‘Net’ in the article dates it – these have been dropped to lowercase in the years since.)

Also from the Press, 4 November 2000: York inches from disaster. Only phone numbers offered back then, for people in at risk areas needing flood news.

Radio pictures, then and now

One of the most memorable images of the impact of the floods, one I’ll remember anyway, wasn’t a photo at all. It was a woman on BBC Radio York talking about her experience downriver at Acaster Selby, dealing with a flooded house, stranded livestock, having to send her children to stay with relatives. @BBCYork are on Twitter too, and Facebook, but through allowing people to speak at moments of crisis they bring us a vivid picture, in that particular way only they can. Good old #localradio @BBCYork, as we might say on Twitter.

The post The way we saw the flood appeared first on York Stories.

As a resident of Clifton, five minutes’ walk away from the River Ouse, I’m close to and fairly familiar with a major part of our flood defences: Clifton ings. Their role in flood management has become clear. So much work has gone in to managing these flows and floods.

Defensive walls and gates

We’ve seen it all before, to some extent, but the river levels this week were apparently the highest since 2000. During a walk through the city centre areas hit by flooding, the two most dramatic and memorable moments were the points where the more obvious flood defences hold the river in. At Scarborough Bridge, where I found the floodgate closed, and the river racing by so high on the other side, and when I walked along the river opposite the Guildhall. In both those places, the river level on the watery side of the flood defence wall was higher than my feet on the dry side of it.

Our instinct about how things work in nature makes this feel just wrong somehow. Having a river channeled like that, artificially high – by rights we should be fighting against drowning, taken along with it. But there it is, on the other side of the wall, rushing by. A bit seeping through the sealed floodgates here and there.

It wasn’t always so carefully channeled through the centre of the city, and used to spread its flood waters further. You can see how it still wants to do that, the way it seeps through the floodgates.

At the other side of town, the floodwaters escaped and expanded as far as Tower Street, as noted in a memorable tweet: “This area was once the moat for Clifford’s Tower: it wants to be again.” (@ralphharrington)

The expansive ings

Less contrived than the walls and gates, more natural, and indeed more beautiful, are the flat areas of land we call the ings. But these are flood defences too, and those upriver take in much of the floodwater before it reaches the historic centre.

Clifton ings are the flat lands left ‘empty’ and undeveloped to the north of the city. Two sections take in water when needed: the large area where the river bends past Clifton Bridge, up to and just beyond the ring road bridge, but also the smaller area behind St Peter’s School, just upstream from Scarborough Bridge. (I call this smaller section Clifton ings – the authorities call it ‘Clifton Long Reach’ or ‘Lower Bootham’, my friend Vanessa who lived nearby knew it as ‘Paddy’s Pitch’.)

These areas turn into lakes when a flooding crisis occurs, with their earthen banks holding the water in and preventing further spread.

So though the city centre suffers damage from flooding, it would presumably suffer from far higher river levels if some of the water rushing downstream hadn’t been taken in by the ings at Clifton.

Improved defences

Old photos of floods in York show how things have changed, how the waters have been managed. Flood waters are shown covering North Street and Rougier Street, before the walls and gates were built to keep the water in and to channel it. Marygate too often flooded in its lower section, before the walls and gates were installed in the late 20th century.

Comparing levels

The stone arches of Ouse Bridge have been photographed in times of flood for more than a century, maybe since photography’s earliest days. They’re a useful reference point. We compare dramatic pictures of the water apparently just inches from the top of the arches, in the various major floods. A flood in 1892 seems to have been recorded on camera as particularly spectacular, and there have been many major floods over the centuries, before and since.

I wonder whether we can rely on such comparisons, as presumably our modern-day channeling of the Ouse in times of flood lifts its levels higher as it approaches Ouse Bridge, as the North Street walls keep it in. In the old days, before artificial flood defences, the Ouse spread where it wanted to, across those riverside areas and streets mentioned earlier. It lost some of its volume and force by heading over the ings, up Marygate, into the Leeman Road area, across North Street and Tanner’s Moat, into the Museum Gardens all around the hospitium, etc. Now less of it escapes on the way to Ouse Bridge, but we still use their arches as a handy reference to gauge whether things are worse than previous floods.

Heroic Clifton …

Fulford ings and Middlethorpe ings take in more floodwater as the Ouse leaves the city centre. They too presumably result in a lowering of the flood level downriver by taking in the expanding Ouse.

But as a Clifton resident I’d like to particularly thank our Clifton ings, for heroically absorbing millions of cubic metres of water, saving the historic core from further flooding. The generous lakes of Clifton, so I’ve read, have the effect of lowering the peak flood level in the city centre by 150mm.

It’s not just the official designated areas taking in some of this flow of water before it hits the city centre. Water of course doesn’t discriminate – it finds its level, and in doing so also floods the playing fields of St Peter’s School, and parts of Homestead Park, as pictured here.

More information

A couple of facts gleaned from the somewhat sparse information available online via a Google search:
The defences in the Scarborough Bridge/Marygate area and the earthen bank in the riverside area behind St Peter’s School were constructed in 1983. The North Street flood defences were constructed in 1992 and 1993. [Source]

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There’s very little useful/user-friendly information available online to someone asking that question. After trawling through a few websites aimed at school pupils, and Google books, I thought I’d provide a useful and hopefully accurate summary/answer, in an effort to fill that gap.

York in particular

• Our main river – the Ouse – collects the waters from several rivers coming down from higher ground in Yorkshire – its tributaries. These are the Ure, Swale, and Nidd. (Other rivers also join the Ouse, beyond York.)
• York is on the confluence of two rivers: the Foss, a smaller river, joins the Ouse just downstream of the city centre, past Skeldergate Bridge.
• At times of heavy rain, it all runs off the higher ground north of York rapidly and hurtles down the tributaries towards us, aiming for escape into the North Sea, via the Humber.
• It’s rather flat down here in the Vale of York (as the name suggests), which means the water spreads out a bit when it gets to us rather than rushing through.

So York has always had a tendency to flood. This most recent and particularly dramatic flood occurred after a record amount of rainfall in a short amount of time. But the spectacle of a rising river spilling out beyond its usual confines is very common in York.

In York and elsewhere

Of course, floods in general, in York and elsewhere, are thought to be getting worse/more frequent, and the general consensus seems to be that this is connected with:

• More of the land is built on, so an increase in hard surfaces like concrete, tarmac etc means water runs off rather than being absorbed into earth as it would be in ‘olden times’ when it was all fields. (A small example of this is the ‘road stream’ spotted by Clifton Bridge recently.)
• Changing weather patterns/climate change.

Also on this website

As mentioned above, the Ouse floods to some extent on a fairly regular basis, and this has been recorded on this website at various times over the years:

Photo from 1978 floods, Ouse Bridge

Station Rise open to through traffic during floods (early 1980s, probably 1982)

Flooding in February 2004

Flooding in October 2004

Flooded ings, November 2006

Riverside walk, rising Ouse after summer rain, 2007

River is up, December 2011

Elsewhere on the web … not much

One useful web page, full of interesting information on the York flooding situation (sadly it looks rather dated and uses a weird font, but anyway): coolgeography.co.uk – floods, York

If you’ve found clear, well-presented, authoritative information on York’s flooding problems, please add any links via the comments form below.

The post Why does York flood? appeared first on York Stories.

The previous day I took a photo, through the gloomy downpour, from the middle of Scarborough Bridge. No chance of getting up there to take a comparison photo – the water has reached the steps and the floodgates to the approach are firmly closed. Though a small amount of water was seeping through, rather worryingly.

Visitors with suitcases asked us how to get to the railway station, and had to be directed to the next bridge, via the Museum Gardens, which we hoped wouldn’t be underwater, though a part of them might …

This ruined bit of building attached to the hospitium in the Museum Gardens is known as the water gate, appropriately. Back in the days when the nearby abbey was a functioning institution, rather than a(nother) ruin as it is now, this led to the river. The river is still close by, but now there’s a small flood bank built between the water gate and the river’s edge, in this part of the gardens.

But the banked section is only short, and doesn’t protect the rest of the Gardens from the river. Not normally a problem, but it is this time. The river has flooded the lower sections. Overturned benches stuck out of the floodwater. It will of course leave a heck of a mess behind when the river levels drop back to normal.

Lendal Bridge took us safely across the river, where Barker Tower on the riverbank was sitting in water, as it so often is. The riverside road alongside it that these steps lead down to was also under a fair bit of water. Lots of mud to clean away here too when the river levels drop.

Though the riverside paths upstream are impassable, the riverside road on the other side of Lendal Bridge was open as normal, because of the flood defences built here. A wall with strong metal gates holds in the river when it rises.

My companion reminded me that in the floods of 2000 this flood wall had sandbags on top of it, and that the water was near the top. So not quite as high, though the river hadn’t peaked at the time these photos were taken, in the late afternoon.

More photos from here on the earlier page: Ouse levels, September 2012 floods.

The river may be held back on North Street, but that big old Ouse oozes out again as soon as it gets chance, over Queen’s Staith, up onto Skeldergate. Opposite, on King’s Staith, the King’s Arms pub and other businesses who deal with this mucky mess on a fairly regular basis.

Striking to see buildings not normally reflected in water, here on Skeldergate.

Another point to stress, which isn’t always clear when the floods are reported in some of the more sensationalised TV and newspaper reports, is that a lot of the flood water isn’t that deep. Here, at the bottom of Carr’s Lane, the alley leading down from Bishophill to Skeldergate, paving is visible through shallow water. Still didn’t fancy wading through it though, so we headed back up to dry ground.

Ah, the dear old Bonding Warehouse. So clearly deserted and standing vulnerable to the floods, and photographed so often with flood waters around it that this image, taken from Skeldergate Bridge, is rather a cliché.

If I remember rightly it was the last severe flood of 2000 that led to its closure.

Over on the other side of the river, an optimistic sign outside the Lowther pub, with the words ‘It’s only a puddle’ looking like they’re soon going underwater. These roads down from Clifford Street to the river often flood at their lower end, but not usually this much.

A pipe from the side of Plonkers wine bar kept discharging spurts of water presumably extracted from the cellars or ground floor areas. A hand appeared from a nearby window and emptied a bucket of water back onto the street. Business owners stood on doorsteps and passers-by like me took photos, and we all stood around staring at the water. At the top of the road a TV reporter prepared to wade in to the floods. Reporters from other TV companies had previously been spotted standing around in waders over on Skeldergate.

Heading back up the road, a glimpse of what they store behind the doors on this street – wellies, waterproofs and sandbags.

The post Wellies, waterproofs and sandbags: York floods, part 3 appeared first on York Stories.

I often wonder what impression people get from the national media reports, if they’re not able to see for themselves the extent of the flooding. The media like to get a reporter in waders standing in water. I saw one today being interviewed in Skeldergate, near the Bonding Warehouse, waders on, flooded street behind, giving the impression that the whole city is inundated.

In fact it’s very localised, the streets and buildings alongside the river. But in those streets, it has a dramatic effect.

To give the normal context, here’s an image taken from Wellington Row (turns into North Street a little further along), just below Lendal Bridge, looking across to the Guildhall and York Boat premises on the opposite bank. This is how it looks in a non-flood situation.

The same buildings and boats, this afternoon (from a slightly different angle). The riverside walkway I took the earlier photo from is now underwater, and you can just see the very top of the metal fencing post so prominent in that photo – the rest is submerged. The boats, floating on the risen Ouse, have risen to obscure most of the windows of the Guildhall buildings. The floodgates and walls are holding the swollen river, and this photo was taken from the pavement on the other side of the wall.

The oddest thing of all was to walk along Wellington Row into North Street with boats at head height. Normally they’re not visible.

Something bizarre in having boats rising above where you’re walking, with a river held in place by floodgates and walls.

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