This morning (08.00) I was pleasantly surprised to see the depth gauge from reception was reading 6.5 (should be about 3.5 in Dec) I was fearing worse! a walk down sandy wall was interesting as it was clear that water was coming in over the river at quite a rate, the river itself was in full flow back towards Yarmouth and the jetty completely underwater, this was 'low tide'.
I then walked to Buckenham where the water was around the top of the bench near the hide, water was seeping through the river bank all along the defence, which I have not seen before.
I returned at 14.00 to find that the depth gauge at reception had disappeared, the pond dipping platform flooded up to the seats, the wet woodland was very flooded, fen hide path had a torrent of water passing over it, the water was about a foot off of the top plank at Sandy Wall and the river was gushing over the fen trail and into the fen. I thought the second tide would be the biggy, now I'm worried about the third tonight!!
I have not had a chance to get to Surlingham today but I imagine church marsh is one big lake at the moment and the path by the duckboards will be a torrent, it may have even breached if there was enough of a flow, we'll see. It will be interesting to see if the new sluice does its job well.
This graph from Environment Agency shows the water level at Brundall/Surlingham, it shows the problem nicely- you can see the water going very low as it was pulled out and then raced up as the surge hit. Check out the low tide dip at 09.00 this morning, it barely registers as a dip at all. The worry now is that there is so much water in the system that tonight's high tide could be even higher....think I'll cancel the work party on Sunday!
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Although these scenes are not nearly
as bad as the North Coast, I'm sure it will damage the ecology of the fen as it is saline water, we'll need to get it off quick!
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| this is not too bad for a 'normal' flood at the fen |
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| Path to Fen hide currently closed |
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| Main path round fen closed, you can't get a sense of the flow of water entering the fen from this shot | , but it was roaring! |
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| river still rising |
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