So, a thread for tales and photos of the floods in Sheffield on Monday the 25th.  My house in Hillsborough has been without power since about 3:30pm on Monday.  Apparently the substation is still underwater so they need the water to subside before they can repair it!  Looks like there won't be any internet from home for me for a couple of days!

Here are some photos I took around Hillsborough:

The Weir at Hillsborough Corner.  The River Loxley is about 10 feet higher than it should be at this point



Same place from the opposite side.  The river is right up to the top of the arch of the bridge.


The other side of the bridge at Hillsborough Corner.  The river is higher than the windows of the buildings on the right hand side!


This is Holme Lane, quite high above the river


The Loxley, a bit further downstream past the Wiers.  The speed of the swollen river was very scary!


Anyone else got any horror stories or photos?

No Photos, but the jouney home took 5 hours 3 minutes.

After moving no more 400 yards in 2 hours, we then had to travel every which way to get anywere near a main road out of Sheffield.

Even those roads were flooded and required a drive through easily a foot of water, but needs must.

All that for what is normally a 25 minute drive and no more than 40 minutes during the peak rush hour.

Needless to say, due to those same problems and other further south down the M1, the road needed into a Sheffield, is now more packed than ever.

This has resulted in me servicing customers from home.

I don't have any photos either, but my journey home to Lincoln took 4 .5 hours last night. One of the main roads through Sheffield city centre was closed due to a possibility of a bridge collapsing. This resulted in grid lock and a nightmare journey!

Whilst the rain was forecast, no-one could have dealt with the volume of rain that fell in such a short space of time (I've heard 1 months worth in a day!), but it still frustrates me that one road closing in Sheffield causes so much traffic chaos! Earlier this year, a 4x4 broke down near the Wicker and caused traffic chaos in and around the city centre - when will the council realise that they need to do something about this!!!

I went a wanderin last night to inspect the damage. I've got some videos too which I'll try to upload somewhere but here are the pics. Most were taken on Penistone road.





More photos of the flood damage here

I attempted to leave the Don Valley area yesterday at 1pm. 3 hours later I was abandoning the car to run for high ground  .

Big up to the NHS staff at Don Valley House for having the tallest building in the area to wait it out in.  I managed to drive out of Don Valley at 2am this morning. Quite remarkable really considering that 2 hours previous the car trapped by the flood waters!  It still took me nearly an hour

Will attempt to get pictures off my phone.

Laters,

Mike

The office must be practically empty today. There's no public transport in Sheff (wasn't this morning anyway) and I decided I certainly wasn't going to risk the roads when I can work just as well from home over VPN!

It's all been a bit of a nightmare really. I made the choice to stay home yesterday after reading traffic reports (thank God I did!), checked my basement at about 1pm and found it had 1" of water in it 

I could also hear running water behind the "waterproof" membrane which was bowing alarmingly. Thankfully we took the PCs and 360s out a couple of weeks ago when this happened on a lesser scale (two floods in Sheff in a fortnight!). It only wrecked the carpet tiles and a rug that time.

So the Fire Brigade inspector comes out and says "That wall is likely to burst, get the stuff out now". Cue me and my better half (Steve) removing all but the furniture - Loads of "stuff", his Retro games collection, rare magazines, rare Records........we stood to lose a lot of irreplaceable items.

By the end of the day there were 4" of water, the relief when the rain stopped was immense! We were very lucky.

So, before and after pics...


Before:






After:






This little lady just wondered what all the fuss was about and why me and Steve don't just go and live in an old rucksack. I think she may have the right idea. At least the rucksack is waterproof 

As promised, a video of the damage. Please excuse the rubbish quality, lack of editing and my distinct lack of artistic flare.

It shows the damage pretty good though.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkQvwoVk3W0

I was working from home yesterday anyway - in Devon.  Planned to leave at 6:30am this morning to be in for lunch today.  Got up and switched on the box.  Live Sky News, M1 Closed, Cars floating around Meadowhall, all good roads gridlocked - decided to stay.  South Yorkshire Police were advising motorists not to travel at that time, so out came the VPN fob!

More photos, this time of the Porter in Encliffe Park

Wow, that's amazing. So glad I was at home and still am!

Some more of the Nursery Street area, one of the main roads into the town centre:

re. The Porter.  The force of the water was quite awesome, even in these (usually) small tributory rivers running through the local parks.  It was hard to comprehend the sheer volume of water rushing along.   Absolutely terrible news about the lad who got carried off in the Sheaf.  My thoughts are with his family.

Really bad to hear that 3 people were killed 

My journy home was also quite interesting, a nice detour round back roads got me and a collegue out of the town center in about 30 minutes (Good work Paul & thanks BTW) Then we had an interesting chase after my girlfriend who got stuck in traffic as she had come to meet me half way.

Did anyone get any pictures of the meadowhall area? I heard that was really bad!

Cheers,
Gary.

For anybody reading this thread who hasn't seen the Blogs.  Carol posted this interesting piece on how the CSC are coping here :-

http://community.plus.net.../its-raining-its-pouring/

Just seen some pics from the Skycopter on Sky News.  The lower car park has several feet of water and will need pumping out.  Indoors, the lower level has not escaped flooding apparently.  There was a picture of the bottom of escalators submerged in water.

I guess Meadowhall is closed today!

EDIT : From their website :
As a result of the extreme flooding in the Sheffield area, Meadowhall has experienced flooding in and around the Centre. Consequently, the Centre is closed for business to coordinate a cleanup operation and ensure a speedy return to normal trading conditions. Further updates will be released on this website.

Old Corporation Street bridge (Bridgehouses) got hit by a tree. That's going to set the roadworks back a bit:

http://www.sheffieldforum...2374664&postcount=725