What a week on the weather front, we’ve had over 50mm of rain in the village and more up on the Plain, so a sudden rise in the water level in both the aquifer and the River Till was pretty much inevitable. Over the last 24 hours, the River Till has risen a further 10mm and groundwater has risen a further 150mm in the Tilshead borehole. As a consequence, there has been a string of Alerts and Warnings for the village issued by the Environment Agency. Not all of these appear to have generated automatic messages, as might have been anticipated. Currently, the situation at the Tilshead borehole looks as follows.
At 99.50 metres AOD we are still below the 99.76 metre AOD peak we reached back on the 10th of January, but we may well reach or even exceed that by the middle of next week, depending on rainfall in the next 48 hours or so.
If you are suffering from any consequences of flooding, whether it be river water coming into your garden, or, preventing access to your parking area, problems with your septic tank being unable to drain away, you are having to pump out sumps to prevent flooding, or, you have water ingress into outbuildings and your house, please report it using The Flood Online Reporting Tool (FORT) which covers this area. Either click on the hyperlink or the QR code below https://swim.geowessex.com/wiltshire/
By doing so, the Environment Agency will get a better understanding of when the impact of rising groundwater begins to be felt in the village and when it stops. That will allow them, in time, to improve the Alerts and Warnings they give, and, in turn, that will give you more time to prepare for floods in the future. It would also be helpful if you could let the Parish Clerk know that you have made a report so that we can get some idea of the scale of the problem across the village by dropping a quick email to: clerk@winterbournestokepc.org.uk
We are going to have a series of showers, possibly heavy, moving eastwards through the area today. Monday should be fine and that will continue into Tuesday, but with rain returning later into the day. More showers and rain seem likely for the rest of the week. The longer-term forecast, throughout most of March, does not look good as we seem increasingly likely to get stuck with a south-westerly airstream bringing in water-laden air from the Atlantic. The question is, how much of this will fall on Wiltshire?
Now here is a challenge for you. It may surprise you to know that Winterbourne Stoke lies in what the hydrologists call the Hampshire Avon Catchment, but where, roughly, is the centre of the catchment? Captain Cook would have known how to work it out, as would many of your children.
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.