Year of the Flood

It's no secret that it has been very wet in Sheffield this year. Whilst almost every day this summer seems to have been wet, the worst day was definitely Monday the 25th of June. By the end of the working day it had been raining heavy and constantly for the best part of 24 hours.

It was clear that there was standing water on the roads but when I set off home the traffic was still moving quite freely. By the time I got to the bus stop though it was clear there were problems. After waiting about 15 minutes at the bus stop and seeing the traffic come to an entire halt I decided to walk the approximately 9 miles home. The closer I got to home the worse the flooding got. I tried to take some photos although unfortunately the camera on my phone is pretty poor. For those of you who know Sheffield though, you should be able to see just how much water there was at Hillsborough Corner, Middlewood Tavern and Oughtibridge.

This post was motivated by a newsletter from out local MP that arrived through the letterbox the other day. The road I walked along (the A6102) has been closed at the Middlewood Tavern ever since the flooding due to damage to the road. Obviously I knew the road was damaged but I didn't know how badly until I saw the following picture in the newsletter

What is really worrying is that the footpath is entirely missing. Worse still I hadn't just walked along that piece of path but I actually stopped and took a photo (the middle one of the three above) looking in the opposite direction to this photo.

I don't know exactly when during the evening the road and path collapsed 60 foot into the river but I am really glad it wasn't when I was stood on it. It was bad enough having to wade through water that was in places almost waist deep, I'd have hated to have slid 60 foot down the hillside into the river.

Unfortunately the damage is so bad that repairs will cost millions of pounds and require serious construction work to make sure the hillside is secure enough that it won't simply collapse again next time it rains. All this means that repairs haven't even started yet. In fact the repairs are not even due to start until well into next year. Having one of the main roads north out of Sheffield closed is causing no end of problems, although I'm sure that if/when it snows the problems are going to get a lot worse as the road being used for a diversion is usually closed after just two snowflakes!