Flooding

We have had amazing weather over the past 2 months.  We were warned about Irish weather and bought all kinds of waterproof apparel and tech fiber layers, but the concern has largely been unfounded.  Sure, there have been some rainy days, but there have probably been more sunny days than rainy days, and a lot of overcast dry days too.  We've been told that the last two summer/falls have been gorgeous.  

There have been a lot of "storms alerts" from the weather center, especially from dying hurricanes, but most have blown over without much impact, at least in our area.

But maybe small amounts of rain add up, and maybe there is more rain at night than we realize.  Because our property, and Clonmel in general, has flooded quite a bit this week.  The water level in the river has risen a few feet, leading a lot of the fields to be flooded, some quite deep.  Below are some before and after pictures (the before pictures are things I have scavenged from our camera rolls that were not taken for this purpose).

Here is the before and after diagram of river size.  We are at the 💗, but we are on a cliff, so we are perfectly dry.  The west side of the river may be worse than I've shown, we can't see it as well.

 

The water was too deep for me to recreate the angle.  Note also that there is no far riverbank visible anymore.

What's hard to appreciate here is that the dark diagonal line across the foreground is a 3 foot drop.  The trees are much lower than where I am standing on the road.

No more road

The water to the right of those trees isn't supposed to be there.  That's a cow pasture.

A little less clearance under that bridge.  I had to get pretty wet for this one.  It went over my boots (after rising two feet up the banks)

The other bridge

Do you see the river in the foreground?  Yeah, that's not supposed to be there.  In the background, you see the river rose over the bed, across the field,  and beyond the trees.

The field behind our home.

Our new lakefront property.  The trees on the right are the boundary of the original river further to the right, but now the river is just 100 yards across, flowing through the trees too, still flowing with quite a strong current.

Hard to appreciate in the previous image is that the fences are under water.  If you see the light diagonal line under the water on the right, that is leaves and grass caught on the electric wire atop the fence.

75% of this field is under water.

The flooding of the field means that the cute little castle-studio rental is now waterfront property (there should be no water in this image).

Kayakers welcome!

The water level almost reached him!  (only the top half of the arrow is above water, if you are struggling to process it)

One last look at where the river is and isn't supposed to be.

It wasn't just our property.  Here are some pictures from town:

Halloween parkrun

For some reason the parkrun was canceled this week. (the same section, from atop the bridge)

 

The start line

Looking back at the start line from the bridge.

 

For weeks we've been wondering why there is a diagonal groove across the plaza near the start line.  It looked like it was for the curtains that subdivide conference rooms into smaller rooms.  We now realize it is to install the temporary floodwall. The existence of said floodwall groove tells me this is not a rare flooding event.

The metal panels from the dry side (you can see the wet side in the previous picture)  Also note the panels on the riverwall to the right.

 

And finally, for the engineers: 

I'm not worried.  Are you worried?

And one fun photo for making it this far.  Clonmel is the proud home of Bulmers Irish cider.  Here is one of their fields after wind and rain (I took this photo - from their Facebook page).