Ox-bow pond near Holmes Bridge

It is perhaps too early to say that Cleveland got off relatively lightly last night from Storm Dennis, as the run-off takes several hours to flow down off the moors to affect river levels. At Little Ayton, the River Leven is high enough to flood a normally dried up ox-bow pond. This is part of the village’s flood prevention scheme. Leaky dams made of hurdle fencing will hold back the water when the level drops. A few hundred metres downstream an old football pitch from the Friends’ School has been made engineered to become a much larger overflow pond but as of this morning, the river level was a good foot below the mouth.