Nivi (and a lot of water) visit Oxford

Well I am officially slack! I have NO photos of Nivi in Oxford so no proof, but maybe Nivi has some photographic evidence of her trip here. Nivi arrived on Friday night and we just chilled out at home as I think we all had that end of the week exhausted feeling, oh and it was kind of still raining. Oxford had it's average rainfall for July fall in a few hours on Friday.

On Saturday Nivi set off on the Oxford Walking Tour to find out all the hidden secrets of Oxford. After that we had a spot of lunch and did a little bit of shopping, then it was back home for a cup of tea and to wait for Peter to return from recording the band's next demo CD.

So it's still raining a fair bit in the evening and I think we were all feeling a little tired and rather uninspired to go out in the rain so we are just sitting around at home and chatting about the rising stream out side our place and then my cell phone rings and I listen to a pre recorded Flood Warning. Something along the lines of '...A severe flood warning has been issued for your area...' I can't quite recall the entire message but this is what the Environment agency website has to say about Severe Flood Warnings, "Severe flooding expected. Imminent danger to life and property. Act now!"

Now given that we are a first floor apartment that's not such a major concern, we are probably well out of the way of the flood water, we may not get out of our building but we are out of the way. However that didn't stop me having a little panic attack. Once Peter and I had been for a LONG walk round Oxford to get me breathing right we headed home for some sleep.

On Sunday we awoke to a lovely clear day and not much of a hint of rain. We watched the start of the F1 and for the first time Peter's team we leading the race for a couple of laps. Admittedly it was by pure chance and under a safety car. After that Nivi and I headed of to the Pitt Rivers Museum and I will say no more. Peter and I will head back there soon and I will leave it to Nivi to tell her version of the visit.

Once I had made sure Nivi made it back to the bus back to London I came home and checked the flooding situation. A few towns upstream of Oxford had flooded with the worse still to come for them. The peak of the flood was still yet to hit Oxford. When Peter got home we went for a walk around out place to see the extent of the flooding thus far.

This photo shows the water levels in the stream outside our place. The photo on the left was taken at 8:12am on Sunday and the photo on the right was taken at 8:43am on Monday. Those bricks are about 10cm high so that's a rise of 20cm in 24hrs. The channel is about 10m wide.

This is a path upstream of our place where the water has already started to seep through the wall, probably through the drainage holes.

The River Thames in Oxford. The houses on the right are actually below the river level so once it breaks it's banks (if it does) then there are in trouble.
This is a road on the other side of the houses above. These houses are actually on an island so are pretty vulnerable, the kid in this picture was having a grand time splashing around in the water.
Flood gates are up! Last time Peter and I walked down here only one of these gates was raised.
These flood marks are recorded at Osney Lock just down stream of the flood gates above. Got a little way to go but I think it's predicted that this wall will over top.
Osney Lock, the lock gates at the other end of the lock are open, if you look carefully the water level is the same on both sides, not much of a lock at the moment.

Some flooding downstream of the lock.

The flooded Thames Path with Peter inspecting the rising water level.

A sad sight around Osney Island, certainly looks like lots of people have done this before.

Botley Road allotments underwater.

And just in case you felt like playing some water golf...
I have today off work so I'm just about to head out and about and see what's happening today. From a purely engineering side of things, it's pretty interesting, but I really feel for all the people that already have been evacuated from their homes and face a huge amount of damage. To give you a little bit of an idea of where we are in relation to all this...

We live about where the H is for Hall, and where all these photos were from was Osney. Note: this is the extreme flood map, not the predicted.