Last night’s Storm Darragh was excuse enough for a stroll along the River Leven. Something vaguely dramatic might have happened. The flood defence scheme had indeed sprung into action, with the old hockey pitch of the former Friends’ School now masquerading as a water meadow. Amusingly, before the school turned it into playing fields, it was a boating lake, which, according to Facebook wisdom, was drained in 1953. How ironic.
Great Ayton’s flood defences, a masterpiece of modern engineering from the early 2000s, cost a tidy £215k. The cunning plan? To create a storage pond that would heroically intercept excess water, hold it, and then dribble it back into the river like a leaky tap once the worst had passed. This morning’s water level, while noteworthy, was no match for the deluge of 2012, when the pond was truly put through its paces.
Of course, the river’s flood behaviour owes much to the topography of the Cleveland Hills. They dictate storm rainfall patterns and ensure the Leven’s floods are quite different compared to other rivers in the North. The most theatrical deluges occur when moist north-easterly winds driven by a depression hovering somewhere off East Anglia meet the high moors. Orographic uplift does its thing, delivering torrential rainfall in biblical proportions, all while elsewhere rivers remain blissfully unaffected.
Further upstream at Holmes Bridge, the riverbank has taken quite the battering. One can only assume it is now engaged in a countdown to see how long the power line pole can cling to its dignity before keeling over.
Sources
- G. Alston Watson; ‘Ayton School Centenary History’ 1841-1941. Headley Bros, 1941.
- Archer, David. ‘LAND OF SINGING WATERS Rivers and Great Floods of Northumbria’. 1992. The Spredden Press
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