It was a close run thing. No-one expected that the snow of last week would give way to a month’s worth of rain on Monday night, flooding many parts of East Anglia. Most of Essex was severely underwater yesterday morning, and just like when the white stuff hit last week, it was a pre-work morning lost in a flurry of radio bulletin listening, and checking the web for latest developments for the latest news.
I made it into work, but Nik took the picture above of the Chelmsford nature reserve near the house on a flood reccie yesterday morning. The river runs to the left of the image just past the trees. The centre of the picture is usually the lush green river bank, and to the right is a footpath, which joins up to the one at the bottom of our road. It looks very deep, but it’s only when you realise that the spindly poles sticking up on the right-hand side of the picture are street lights, then it’s apparent just how high the water was.
Threatening to creep into the neighbours’ garden across the road, the water took the allotments captive that back onto us, and even Central Park in the centre of the town resembled a lake. It’s only happened once before while we’ve been here, but this week’s flood water level was much worse than that of last time. The waters have receded today (but haven’t disappeared), and the authorities say that they have now peaked, but for a few hours yesterday, there was a real evacuation danger.
Tags: Chelmsford, Essex, Journal