Saturday 7 December 2013

Storm surge washes road away in Rye Harbour Nature Reserve

We'd heard that there was some significant damage in the Rye Harbour Nature Reserve due to Thursday night's storm surge, so we wandered down there at high tide today for a look... What's worth knowing is that this road was built in the 1940s and this is the first time the sea has ever come over it. That tells us something about the magnitude of this storm surge and the rise in sea levels over the past 60 years (about 10cm, or 4")...

DSC_7582 Storm surge damage at Rye Harbour Nature Reserve

There's also a video that some of the staff took of it at high tide on Friday:


What seems to have happened is that the tide got high enough to wash over the top of the road and plunge over the other side - there are several points where there are holes created by the water:
DSC_7571 Storm surge damage at Rye Harbour Nature Reserve

with the scoured shingle from under the road spread out beyond them:
DSC_7572 Storm surge damage at Rye Harbour Nature Reserve

DSC_7574 Storm surge damage at Rye Harbour Nature Reserve

But in some places the scouring went a bit further...
DSC_7580 Storm surge damage at Rye Harbour Nature Reserve

One of the passing places has collapsed:
DSC_7575 Storm surge damage at Rye Harbour Nature Reserve

DSC_7576 Storm surge damage at Rye Harbour Nature Reserve

and in another area the scouring caused the whole road to cave in:
DSC_7585 Storm surge damage at Rye Harbour Nature Reserve

this of course led to more scouring on the upstream side of the collapsed road:
DSC_7592 Storm surge damage at Rye Harbour Nature Reserve

and then scenes like this:
DSC_7587 Storm surge damage at Rye Harbour Nature Reserve

DSC_7589 Storm surge damage at Rye Harbour Nature Reserve

Parts of the road are now some distance away...
DSC_7590 Storm surge damage at Rye Harbour Nature Reserve

and another slab is a bit lower than it used to be:
DSC_7583 Storm surge damage at Rye Harbour Nature Reserve

The force of the water had also pushed the fence over and uncovered an electricity cable:
DSC_7579 Storm surge damage at Rye Harbour Nature Reserve

Part of me wishes I'd been there on Thursday night to watch it happen, but it probably wouldn't have been the safest place to be... Bizarrely I may have been the last person to cross this bit of road before it fell in, as I went for a night-time bike ride down there on Thursday evening (with some very bright LED lights) and crossed this part of the road at about 9:30pm - it would have caved in at about 1am.

Mike

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Friday 6 December 2013

High tide flooding in Rye

I went down to the quay this lunchtime to see how high the tide got... It was the highest I've ever seen it, though a I guy I was talking to said he'd been there at 1am last night and it had been at least a foot higher. Here's a short video, and then some pics:



DSC_0292 flooding in Rye

DSC_0287 High tide flooding in Rye

DSC_0284 High tide flooding in Rye

Apparently last night this car was covered up to the top of the wheels:
DSC_0293 car drying our after flooding

How or why they'd managed to park this side of the flood barriers I don't know... I guess the windows are open to help it dry out! I was told that the water had been spraying through the flood barrier wall here, where it was still accumulating at high tide today:
DSC_0291 Water seeping during high tide in Rye

The evidence of this could still be seen - silt on the pavement:
DSC_0290 Silt after flooding in Rye

There was also some seepage going on today:
DSC_0286 Water seeping during high tide in Rye

And the flood barriers were still closed:
DSC_0294 Rye flood barriers

Glad it wasn't any worse!

Mike

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Sunday 24 November 2013

A quick bit of chainsawing in the woods

With the glorious sunshine yesterday afternoon, a quick trip to the woods was in order. The priority was to use the chainsaw to quickly produce some small logs to split up at home for kindling, which was done in pretty short order:

DSC_7533 logs and chainsaw

I also took up a treat for the wild birds, which I'm sure they'll appreciate now the weather is colder...
DSC_7535 wild bird seed

As there was still a bit of daylight left, I popped over to the area I've been coppicing, which is looking pretty barren now the leaves are mostly gone:
DSC_7538 Coppice woodland in autumn

I didn't stop long, but managed to make a small start on the empty log rack I'd left there. These logs should be surplus to requirements, so we're able to sell some in future winters (this year we've only got enough to heat our own place...).
DSC_7541 freshly felled logs

It was pleasing to see that the logs in the rack I filled back at the start of September have already started showing signs of seasoning, with a few of them developing splits in the ends:
DSC_7545 logs seasoning

DSC_7547 logs seasoning

Looking forward to burning them in a couple of years!

Mike

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Sunday 10 November 2013

Rye Fawkes 2013 bonfire, parade and fireworks - video & photos

Brilliant parade, fireworks and bonfire in Rye last night!

IMG_4527 Rye Fawkes 2013

Here's a short video I put together of the highlights...


Loads of burning torches in the parade, and no accidental fires as far as I could see!
IMG_4517 Rye Fawkes 2013

though it did look like this guy might have an accident...
IMG_4531 Rye Fawkes 2013

Big crowds as usual, thousands of people there!
IMG_4523 Rye Fawkes 2013

Looking forward to the next time...

Mike

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Wednesday 30 October 2013

Clearing up storm damage while avoiding a hornets' nest!

Meet the European Hornet...

IMG_4473 European Hornet

IMG_4472 European Hornet

We had to work around a nest of them today, as they were in the storm-damaged oak tree I mentioned in yesterday's blog post. You can just see a couple of them going into the crack in the tree that was probably what weakened it and resulted in the storm damage.
IMG_4479 European Hornet
Fortunately they look much more scary (being an inch long and noisy!) then they are, and are actually quite timid and if they do sting it's no worse than a normal wasp sting (see Wikipedia).

Here's how the oak tree looked after the storm:
IMG_4463 St Jude storm damage 2013

It took us a while, but after some chainsawing and winch work, we got the broken section down on the ground:
IMG_4474 Tree damaged in Oct 2013 UK storm

IMG_4477 Tree damaged in Oct 2013 UK storm

To get it down we looped a 4-tonne sling round the branch near where it attached to the tree - this effectively doubles its strength to 8 tonnes, see the table on this page. We attached a 10-tonne pulley to the sling using an 8-tonne bow shackle - using a pulley doubles the power of the winch:
IMG_4478 winch pulley attached to tree

Through the pulley was a 20 metre 15-tonne steel rope, with one end anchored to a tree with another sling and bow shackle:
IMG_4480 winch line anchored at tree

The other end was attached to the steel rope that went through our Tirfor T516 winch - this can pull 1.6 tonnes, so all the other components in use are stronger, eliminating the chance of unexpected failures.
IMG_4481 Tirfor T516 winch

That's an awful lot of gear to push through the woods on a wheelbarrow, but it got the job done with us stood at a safe distance from the tree! We even managed to avoid damaging the hornets' nest, so they can carry on living in the trunk of the tree and the cracked bit of the branch which is now on the ground.

We cleared up some coppice stools that had been blown over too, and there are still a few more of these to do before we've finished clearing up from the St Jude's Day storm which hit the UK on 28 Oct 2013.

Mike

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Tuesday 29 October 2013

Clearing up after the storm, October 2013

As you might expect, we had a bit of storm damage in the woods after the 'St Jude's Day Storm', which hit the UK in the early hours of Monday 28 October. Nothing too major fortunately, some coppice stools and one oak that kind of broke in half...

IMG_4463 St Jude storm damage 2013

Quite a few coppice stools are leaning, and will be dealt with in the next few days:
IMG_4451 St Jude storm damage 2013

Some have come right down:
IMG_4452 St Jude storm damage 2013

while others had a 'domino' effect:
IMG_4454 St Jude storm damage 2013

Note - this is why you have to be TWO tree-lengths away from a person felling a tree...

Some of the stools I cleared up yesterday, after the wind had died down:
IMG_4458 St Jude storm damage 2013

IMG_4460 St Jude storm damage 2013

There was also a branch in the path by Sweep Wood:
IMG_4456 St Jude storm damage 2013

it had come from this oak tree:
IMG_4457 St Jude storm damage 2013

Here's a quick video of me using a chainsaw to clear the fallen branch and also a coppice stem that was leaning over a path, taken using a chest-mounted GoPro camera:


The oak tree that split up the middle was up the top of the hill in Chestnut Coppice:
IMG_4464 St Jude storm damage 2013

It's made a bit of a mess and I need to go back up there to sort it out with a winch...
IMG_4465 St Jude storm damage 2013

IMG_4466 St Jude storm damage 2013

Still, could have been much worse, we're thankful this is all that fell!

Mike

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