High river flows again....

Its been rubbish for the last two years mate ! I still think something has changed at the EA as the river seems to be in flood more than its not . Maybe the lock keepers still working to rule rather than discretion , i dont know but something has changed and it seems to tie in with selling the lock houses .
 
Went out this afternoon and surprised how high the levels were and a fair bit of stream running, but not too bad, just the river height really. I'm hoping thing will settle down bit for Easter but unlikely given the forecast, so will be a slow slog going upriver, more time for Bloody Mary's and champers I guess
 
Looking for a large river?

Central Australia has an area about half the size of Europe under water, a one in 100 year event.

Water is expected to flow from the north of Queensland to the ocean in South Australia.

Many outback stations and towns are flooded and many more are building levy banks.

I suspect the 11 year drought has broken.
 
River was high Saturday (Temple lay-by underwater) and flowing quite fast. Was fine for us (ex my wet feet at said layby) but wouldn't want to be out in a single-engined sportsboat for example. Hope it comes down for everyone's Easter plans.
 
Cuchilo said:
Maybe the EA is trying to get rid of the water for the easter weekend ? Do they actually think that way ?
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I was thinking that this afternoon. We were supposed to have a 6.8m tide but it was over the wall and reached the gate of the Barmy. Probably half a metre more than predicted.
 
Cuchilo said:
Maybe the EA is trying to get rid of the water for the easter weekend ? Do they actually think that way ?
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Got a feeling that with all the rain up country, as fast as they get rid of a bit there's a whole lot more heading down to replace it. Once the weirs are open there's next to b*gg*r all anyone can do but let it go baby ! From taking a peek at the flow at Bray on Sunday I'd say it was doing a good 3 to 4 knots.
 
All i know is this is the third year running where the river seems to be running very fast . I wont use the word flood as that will become a technical detail that will over take the fact that the river is running faster than normal .
Ive mentioned before that i grew up in Marble Hill Park on the Thames so have been watching the river all my life . Something is not right and i feel its the lock keepers working to rule and getting told what to do rather than knowing what to do as they are there ? I could be totally wrong of course but ............
 
So , in essence , you are saying that we are instructed which gate to open from the office and we are mere 'button pushers' ?

I can assure you i know exactly what i am doing on my weir , as do all the other staff . Come and tell me i am working to rule when i am on the weir late on New Years Eve ( like last year ) ... i am paid to maintain the water levels and if that involves operating my weir at unsocial hours, then that is what i do.

I can't answer your question as to why the reaction time of the river is so much faster than before , because i don't know the answer ( if there is one ) . I can tell you though that the lock staff decide which gate to open and when , not the office . We have pulling orders ( charts ) in each office , which we stick to . In most cases , these charts have been in existance for a long long time. They get altered when a new weir is built. Our pulling order has been consistant for the last 20 years ( ish ) since our new weir went in.

We don't go out of our way to make the river run fast , we have target levels to achieve , when the river starts rising , we pull gates out to make sure we don't rise above the target levels. When it starts falling we shut the gates to make sure we don't fall out of our target levels. The weir gates and the pulling order ( at Teddington ) are the same as they have been for the last two decades.

We can't just pull more gates out to 'clear' the water quicker , because it just doesn't work like that , if you overcook it , you send 'holes' and 'lumps' ( as they are colloquially known ) downriver and this makes life difficult for the keepers downriver. We open gates as quickly as the river rises and close them as quickly as it falls. Sometimes we have to open a gate every day , sometimes you might open six gates in four hours , it all depends on the way the water comes downstream.

There is no conspiracy being devised by the lock staff i'm afraid. If you want to come to the lock when i am on duty , i am more than happy to explain it ( as it is easier to explain face to face than typing ). Give me a call on the lock number and we can arrange it.
 
Well done TL, you covered all the technical bases but omitted to tell them what "pull" means.

Allow me to explain.

What it is, see chaps, is that just above Sunbury Lock is a large pink and green buoy off to one side clear of the channel. A junior lock keeper is deputised to row out to this in a clinker dinghy while the others put their feet up. When he gets to the buoy he is to make fast to it, and then begin to "pull" it, hand over hand.

Attached to the buoy is a chain which is marked every foot by different marks, these like the old lead-line are cloth, leather, cable ties and so on so that in the dark the junior knows how much he is "pulling" by the feel. He has been instructed how much to pull beforehand. Now, if the river is really high he naturally has to pull a bit more.

I swear that if you are near the EA yards on either bank, as the chain is pulled you can hear the gurgle as the plug lifts out the bottom. All that water has to go somewhere, unfortunately due to bottom erosion it simply bubbles back up from the water table, which is quite a large 6-legged one made of elm, and reappears just below Sunbury Lock.

However, not to worry, just above Molsley Lock there is a green and yellow buoy, and just above Teddington Lock the buoy has now been painted a fetching shade of lilac and one can observe little green dinghys being pulled vigorously out to these buoys something like 30 minutes after Sunbury has pulled.

Now you know the real story, but please keep it quiet as the EA want every one to think it is the weirs that do it but they were only put in to stop unlicensed craft proceeding upstream.
 
It has been quite bad this year, when it was bad after the snow, it was in flood for quite a while so don`t think its the keepers. However this last lot of heavy rain saw the river up and down like a yo yo. Last week it was at least 18" above the usual level then suddenly dropped back to the normal level in a few hours causing me boat to get caught on the bank. Assume this is where the keeper decided the level is now ok or something and closes the sluices.
 
teddington_lock said:
So , in essence , you are saying that we are instructed which gate to open from the office and we are mere 'button pushers' ?

I can assure you i know exactly what i am doing on my weir , as do all the other staff . Come and tell me i am working to rule when i am on the weir late on New Years Eve ( like last year ) ... i am paid to maintain the water levels and if that involves operating my weir at unsocial hours, then that is what i do.

I can't answer your question as to why the reaction time of the river is so much faster than before , because i don't know the answer ( if there is one ) . I can tell you though that the lock staff decide which gate to open and when , not the office . We have pulling orders ( charts ) in each office , which we stick to . In most cases , these charts have been in existance for a long long time. They get altered when a new weir is built. Our pulling order has been consistant for the last 20 years ( ish ) since our new weir went in.

We don't go out of our way to make the river run fast , we have target levels to achieve , when the river starts rising , we pull gates out to make sure we don't rise above the target levels. When it starts falling we shut the gates to make sure we don't fall out of our target levels. The weir gates and the pulling order ( at Teddington ) are the same as they have been for the last two decades.

We can't just pull more gates out to 'clear' the water quicker , because it just doesn't work like that , if you overcook it , you send 'holes' and 'lumps' ( as they are colloquially known ) downriver and this makes life difficult for the keepers downriver. We open gates as quickly as the river rises and close them as quickly as it falls. Sometimes we have to open a gate every day , sometimes you might open six gates in four hours , it all depends on the way the water comes downstream.

There is no conspiracy being devised by the lock staff i'm afraid. If you want to come to the lock when i am on duty , i am more than happy to explain it ( as it is easier to explain face to face than typing ). Give me a call on the lock number and we can arrange it.
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I didnt say you didnt know what was going on I said i thought maybe you where working to the book and doing only what you are told to do . You say thats not the case then fine but it still doesnt explain why the river has been running faster than normal for the last few years .
 
High flows

It is easy to assume that there must be some mismanagement to blame, but surely it has more to do with different weather patterns, possibly made worse by development on flood plains.

The Met Office website has quite an interesting little chart showing rainfall anomolies since 2001 against average rainfall in the period from 1971 to 2000. There have been some pretty big spikes, in particular in 2009 and 2007 where it looks like significantly higher than average rain fell over a short space of time.

In 2006 there was a severe water shortage with restrictions in some locks so it has cerainly been up and down. I am not sure it is really that unusual either. I seem to recall in my first year of boating on the Thames in about 1993 the Easter break was a complete wash out

A bit unfair to blame the EA and the lockkeepers.
 
Cuchilo said:
I didnt say you didnt know what was going on I said i thought maybe you where working to the book and doing only what you are told to do . You say thats not the case then fine but it still doesnt explain why the river has been running faster than normal for the last few years .
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Well I blame it all on Forbsie taking less water with his whiskey....... :D
 
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