Tewkesbury...

[fajrdrako]

I just looked at a photo of Tewkesbury.

Oh my goodness.

Comments

[haydenthorne.livejournal.com]

It's so surreal.

[sparklebutch.livejournal.com]

I watch news.

I didn't know how much other people watched news, because it seems no one's talking about it on my flist until now.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Watch news? On television, you mean?

I seldom do, for various reasons. I propbably should. Occasionally.

[sparklebutch.livejournal.com]

I rarely do, but I do lately, Cat watches the floods.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I might even have a look myself tonight, if I remember to turn on the TV.

[walkingowl.livejournal.com]

I'd heard of this, but had not seen any images. My goodness... this is overpowering.

I have a personal memory of being in nearly the same condition as those people in the flooded-highway-intersection photo. I blithely almost drove into floodwaters one January night, after all the snow had melted but I had not connected that with the additional fact that my road, if I turned left right here, was across a marsh... and, suddenly, there was no road, only racing black water under a moonless sky. Yikes!

I hope things work out for these people. How devastating.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I hope things work for them too, and better than in New Orleans. (Not that it's the same problem; I realize this is simple river flooding due to excess rain, not the encroachment of the ocean due to insufficient dykes.)

simhedges (who lives in the area, though at the moment he's high and dry in Somerset) had some interesting things to say about this as a long-term problem. Is it worth putting dykes or walls around the Severn, which is expensive and invasive, when the weather might become drier? I would say "probably", but it's a gamble. The meteorologists had been predicting that the effect of global warming on northern Europe would be drought conditions. Well! Not right now.

[auriaephiala.livejournal.com]

According to this article on CBC: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2007/07/23/science-rainfall-climate.html?ref=rss, "global warming contributed significantly to increases in precipitation in the Northern Hemisphere's mid-latitudes, a region between 40 and 70 degrees north." In other words, Britain and Canada could get more rain/snow in future, not less.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I really think they haven't figured out what is happening, or what is going to happen. I have very little faith in meteorology as a field of study.

And even if/when they do figure out what is happening, it isn't easy to determine what to do about it - the whole social/political problem.

I don't know if more rain or snow would be a big problem here - depends on the severity, I guess - but more ice storms? (Shudder.)

[darthhellokitty.livejournal.com]

It looks like Earthsea. And that's scary because it SHOULDN'T.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

How about Waterworld? It shouldn't look like that, either.

[duncanmac.livejournal.com]

For me, it has a particular resonance. I've lived in Gloucester and visited Tewkesbury.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I suspect it was less damp when you were there.

[damalan.livejournal.com]

The really strange thing is that it is a huge UK story as a lot of people are affected. And yet if you live outside the region affected, we've had a lot of wet weather but nothing to suggest just how bad this is. We're a small country, but this is pretty localised. So there is a surreal quality to it.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

That's interesting - ! Our media is generally all over stories like this. When the Red River in Manitoba floods, as it often does in the spring - and the land around it is very flat - our news is full of pictures of people placing sandbags and speculation as to if/when the floods will reach Winnipeg, that sort of thing. And I'm in eastern Ontario, which is nowhere near the Red River. It's like you looking at the Danube or the Volga.

Maybe it has to do with population density. In England, there are people and settlements everywhere. In Canada, we all fit into a teaspoon... draw a straight line between Ottawa and Winnipeg, and how many cities are there? Places like Sudbury and Wawa and Thunder Bay, really not much compared to any chunk of land in England. So it stands to reason you'd all feel more regional and localized.

But still. Yes, it's surreal.

[damalan.livejournal.com]

Sorry, it is all over the national news. But normally in this country a trouble that affects one region affects us all. This has been so much more localised than normal. Over the weekend I travelled around the edges of the affected region, and there was nothing really to show how bad things were.

Still, we all have to show Blitz spirit apparently, so that's okay. ;-)

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Glad to hear the Blitz spirit isn't dead! I like the way an offhand comment like that can make me think of Captain Jack in World War II....

[auriaephiala.livejournal.com]

I've been reading about this with increasing unease (glad to see that commodorified is OK).

The situation with the Oxford colleges does not look good.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

It's scary. There's a sense of unreality about it, in a "this can't be happening" sort of way. Obviously travel in the UK is totally messed up, and yes, I'm glad commodorified and iclysdale are all right. It looks as if they really chose 'interesting times' for their trip.

[theohsocurlyone.livejournal.com]

Tewkesbury's about ten miles down from us in Cheltenham, but luckily our floods have gone down by now. Just. Still, I keep watching footage of Tewkesbury on the news and shaking my head in disbelief. It's mental! The entire county's water supplies have been cut off, and they say it'll be a fortnight before they're back on. We even got a visit from Gordon Brown (although he didn't come to Cheltenham - we've been lucky by comparision).

God, if you're up there, please give us some sun!

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

My goodness, these must be difficult times when you don't know what the weather will do. Why will it take so long before they turn the water back on? Hang in there!

[filkferengi]

Kind of makes you want to go back & reread _Nine Tailors_, doesn't it?

I'm glad folks are okay.