Flood surge

The bad weather of the last few weeks has caused problems for various locations around the country. This has meant a range of snowfall, ice and strong winds. A few centimetres of snow has caused the usual chaos in some places.
On Friday night this week, thousands of people were evacuated, or advised to evacuate from properties along the East coast, from Northumberland round to Essex. In the end the combination of factors didn't all happen at the same time to raise the level of the tide. These included:
- high spring tides (full moon)
- strong northerly winds (which didn't turn out as forecast)

This morning, I headed for Sheringham to see the results of last night. Much of the promenade was cordoned off, and there were smashed up beach huts and other cobbles and debris on the sea front. Fishing boats had been pulled up into the village and parked outside houses, and the fences had been damaged. We visited our favourite Funky Mackerel Cafe and had some chips in the sun. Always good to get a bit of fresh air. Some of the pictures I took are in the show below. They may be of use or interest to someone...

Storm Surge - a trip around the coast... Pt. 1

I spent yesterday on the first part of a journey around the coast of Norfolk from Wells next the Sea, visiting some of the communities that were affected by the recent storm surge. The surge affected communities much further up the coast in Lincolnshire and East Yorkshire, then down into the Thames estuary.
I will be writing up some of the discussions that I had with people and the stories that I collected in further posts over the next week or so.

The full detail, and more images, will appear in a range of resources, including a new GCSE textbook.
Here's a selection of the images I took yesterday...



I was also particularly interested in this image, which shows the area of London that would have flooded in the surge if the Thames Flood Barrier had not been built.

Image copyright: Environment Agency

The Environment Agency has shared a range of valuable information, and I will be adding to that in further posts...

Storm Surge...

I had a busy day on Thursday last week. I woke in the Palace Hotel, Manchester and led a day looking at some possible Futures for Secondary Geography.

When I went to the station, there was a milling mass of chaos as thousands of people headed for trains which were mostly cancelled, delayed, or terminating at different places. Some trains had platform alterations, were cancelled then reinstated, or were running late. 

Luckily my train was still running, although it started to lose time during the journey, and ended up being rather late, and stopping at random stations... but with each minute I got closer to home...

Along the way, I loaded up my BBC Radio App and started to listen to the local radio station(s)

Here are some of the notes I took while listening to BBC Radio Norfolk

Storm surge stories

Strong winds - blowing onshore and creating large waves

Tide - high tide coinciding with the surge ?

Heavy rain - rivers swollen, so tidal stretches higher than usual

Low pressure - sea surface higher than usual, because no atmosphere pressing down on the surface

Link to explanation of surge - possible student creation of animations or updated illustrations...

1953 was mentioned – ‘surge of 1953 proportions’ underway (after the event it turned out that in some places like King's Lynn the storm surge was actually higher than in 1953)

I picked up on Twitter that houses on the beach road in Snettisham, where I lived for 12 years, were being evacuated. The caravans in that area don't have winter occupation.

Wells next the Sea 

Staithe St was already being flooded

Quayside closed and the flood barriers were closed - the chandlery was on the news later (and was also visited by David Cameron more recently...)

Cromer

High seas hitting the esplanade and sea wall

Lifeboat inaccessible

Boats moved to top of ramp near the Henry Blogg museum, which was under threat. Beach huts at risk.

Sea hitting the base of the pier

Rocks at the base of the esplanade cracked

Great Yarmouth

Cliff Park High School housing residents from an old folks home

Students are helping out 

Sheringham

Somebody called Ian, who'd had a business on sea front since 1995 was concerned about his business and had never seen anything quite like it...

Blakeney Point

Hotel being evacuated…

King's Lynn

River Ouse almost touching the bridge at Kings Lynn

King’s Lynn – Purfleet - a big crowd gathering

1 in 200 year event specification for the defences...

Boston

18 000 people moved from houses.. 

 I liked this quote:

‘I’ve been talking rather inexpertly because I’m not a geographer'

Matthew Gudgin, presenter on BBC Radio Norfolk

I finally got back to Ely over an hour later than planned, and then had to claim my car from the school car park and drive home... A long, and varied day... Living Geography...

This Thursday I intend to head over to the coast to collect some stories and take some photos with the aim of developing a case study for a GCSE textbook I'm going to be writing part of next year...
There has been plenty of coverage in the local and national news over the last week, and some great community efforts to support those who were affected...
Watch this space for more...

Flooding.... then and now...

Today marks the 60th anniversary of the East Coast Floods of 1953.

I lived in Snettisham on the Norfolk coast for 12 years, and on the evening of the 31st of January 1953, a storm surge hit the coast of Norfolk, having previously caused devastation in Lincolnshire, and moved around down into the Thames Estuary.
The wall of water was the result of a combination of a high tide, low pressure associated with a storm and winds which pushed the storm onto the coastline. There were many more temporary and wooden dwellings along the coast than there are now (many of these now have restrictions to prevent people living in them during the winter months)

On the 50th of anniversary, I went to an event in Snettisham Village Hall, where I met and chatted to a few people who were living in the village at the time, and shared their memories.

A total of 25 people died in Snettisham during the floods. Water inundated the areas inland from the beach: an area I have walked and cycled many times.

Further along the coast in Hunstanton, there was help from a number of the American servicemen who were posted in the area at nearby RAF Sculthorpe (ten minutes from where I live now) at the time. Several earned medals for their bravery, and some local people won them posthumously.

The Eastern Daily Press had a range of materials in its pages this week.

This included some useful reporting on the local area.

It was sometime before the final death toll for Norfolk and Suffolk was known. In the early stages, no-one really knew who was missing, who had died and who had escaped. In some cases it was months before all the bodies were recovered.

In Norfolk, exactly 100 people died – Hunstanton (32 – including 17 Americans), Snettisham (25), King’s Lynn (15), Yarmouth (9), Heacham (9), Sea Palling (7), Salthouse (1), Wiveton (1) and Watlington (1).

In addition five died at Southwold and 11 were lost from the Lowestoft trawler Guava.

Later one person died from exposure at Lowestoft and a Wroxham man was killed in a bulldozer accident on flood relief work.

Along the Norfolk coastline, more than 5,000 homes were either destroyed or damaged.

I have put together a lesson activity that can be viewed on my VITAL GEOGRAPHY PORTAL.

This has links through to many resources. Here are a few of the links:

- A STORIFY by the Environment Agency on the flooding.
- Follow @EnvAgencyAnglia for tweets 'as it happened' through today and tomorrow
- A great PINTEREST board of images by the Environment Agency
- A FLICKR set of images
- A guest BLOG POST on the Met Office website.

Thanks to Johann Tasker for linking through to a special issue of The Farmers Weekly which was published the week after (16 Mb PDF)

Are we better able to cope now - how resilient are we to flooding ? Today's Telegraph has an interesting article.
Finally, well done to Cromer Museum (I'm a member...) for creating this short video: