The River Thames in flood at Staines.

Welcome to Waterworld – Tuesday and I headed back to Staines to take photos. Remember Saturday? Here’s the river bank back then:

 

And this is what it looks like today, Tuesday:

 

Here’s the old floodmark on the River Colne, just before it joins up with the Thames. It's nearly 4 feet above normal. The Great Flood of 1947 which is at 8 feet didn’t reach us but now The Jubilee Canal is bringing extra water downstream and the M25 orbital Motorway put a bridge across the Thames with arches that were too small. That changes everything.

Before the Romans came and built a bridge here, there were a series of white water rapids from just above Staines down to Laleham. They have all been ‘tamed’ with a mixture of lock gates, weirs and diversions.

Very dramatically, the lock keepers will already have had their 'doomsday' order to ‘open the lock gates’ in an effort to let the waters downstream as fast as possible. It’s like reaching for the last bullet, it’s s@#$t or bust.  

Here is where The Colne enters the Thames, it’s usually a little rapid, today it’s slow and sluggish. The Thames is pushing its water back. The Colne comes through chalk and gravel bands and its waters are clear and bright. The Thames in flood is heavy with silt and you can see the dividing line as the two rivers fight it out.

 

These two photos are from as near as I could get to where I took a picture on Saturday. This is a resident trying to get her car home:

 

 And this is Lammas Park, the water is covering the Crazy Golf (a bit more crazy today) and you can see the kiddies playground in the distance. The river is about 500 yards to the left of this shot.

I got soaked doing this, you can see the raindrops on my little lens.

In town the water was coming up out of the drains which is never a good sign. It’s looking bad for the Two Rivers Shopping area.

Not so good where I am either. Gulp!

Neil Harris

(a don’t stop till the water reaches chest height production)

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