A call to the Environment Agency last Monday and they quickly had an engineer out to fix the sensor in the borehole. Thankfully, the sensor has a backup data storage capability, so none of the readings had been permanently lost. Over the week the water levels in the borehole have steadily fallen; until this morning when it has started to level off and now stands at 98.41 metres AOD; below the 99.50 metre level where property flooding is deemed likely. With 30 mm of rain over the last week and 18.4mm of that in the last 24 hours, it seems possible that the water level will begin to rise over the next 2 or 3 days. There was something of a ‘fake news’ story on the BBC’s South Today segment of BBC Breakfast this morning, with the reporter excitedly pointing out the bad weather yesterday and the Environment Agency Flood Warning for groundwater flooding in the Till Valley. The reality being that the Flood Warning has been in place for over a month with falling water levels for the last fortnight. Sadly, an example of sloppy reporting by the BBC.
With warmer weather, the spring flowers and grass are already growing and taking up water, trees are also coming into bud and the sap is rising. Consequently, it’s hard to know if the level will rise again, plateau or simply have a slower rate of fall. Another 10-20mm of rain before Wednesday would pretty much guarantee another rise, but what is going on with the weather over the next few days and weeks?
We can expect a sunny late morning today, with the chance of a few more showers rolling in by dusk. The weather is set to be much the same on Tuesday and Wednesday with a procession of showers rolling through the south-west. It looks as if the end of the week will be fine and even sunny, but there is a chance that the showers might return after the weekend; with luck, they may pass to our north. As suggested last week, March is going to see a series of Atlantic systems blow through bringing even more showery weather, but the gaps between these will be dry and sunny and maybe warmer than average.