Christmas floods

Floods are never good at any time, but at Christmas they are really not welcome.  Judging by the pictures we've seen on the television over the past few days, many folk have had a rough time of it, with flooded homes and no electricity over the festivities.  I feel for them.

Here, the weather all day Monday and into the early hours of Christmas Eve morning was as wet and windy as I can remember, and come daylight on Tuesday, the flooding and damage was plain for all to see.  Roads were closed, trees down, and buildings flooded.  

Brading marshes - usually green fields but on Christmas Eve completely under water (and still flooded today)

We have one stretch of railway line on the Island, from Shanklin to the end of the pier at Ryde.  On the final leg, the line passes through a tunnel approaching Ryde Esplande.  This is what it looked like on Christmas Eve:

Photo by Sara Richardson

And this is what the flood waters left behind when we were there today:

It's a terrible mess, and I don't think the trains will be running for a while!

N and I went for a walk along the seafront this afternoon - a glorious day just made for walking - and this is the aftermath of the clear-up operation.  A huge channel has been gouged in the sand down to the sea where all the flood waters were pumped away over the sea wall.  That's my shadow, so you get an idea of the scale.

I carried on walking along the sea wall to Seaview, and Apply Sands has a new feature - a shingle bank stretching, I guess, about half a mile along the beach and several feet in width.  All this used to be sand until Monday evening!  The storm had dredged up loads of old oyster shells; some of them were quite a size, about 5 or 6 inches in diameter.

I had to drive into Sandown Christmas Eve and again today.  The flooding between Brading and Sandown had closed the road, so a detour took us through Yaverland and along the sea road.  It was covered in sand, blown up over the wall.  I've not seen that before, and made for interesting driving!

Sandown Bay looking towards Shanklin on Christmas Eve

and today

From the same place (Yaverland) looking the opposite direction towards Culver Cliff on Christmas Eve:

and again this morning - lots of people making the most of good weather on Boxing Day to get out and about.

There's another storm brewing out in the Atlantic, heading our way tomorrow.  We'll have to wait to see what it has in store for us.