Storm Bert fills the Taff to overflowing

Rain in the night and lighter rain most of the morning flood warnings galore. Miserable. We went to Saint Catherine's for the Eucharist. With the Sunday school children, wearing paper crowns in honour of Christ the King at the end, we were over forty. Despite the weather yesterday's Christmas Fayre exceeded last year's revenue by more than ten percent. Hilary remarked on the number of older non churchgoing people from the neighbourhood, among those making the effort to attend the Fayre. It's a positive indication about the good will the church enjoys locally. 

After lunch, I took a brolly and my camera for a walk in the rain down to Blackweir. As expected after two days of continuous rain, often heavy was exceptionally high, high enough to break through the banks on both sides, flooding the fields. It was worse this time than when the fields last flooded, with water this time reaching up as far as the initial west side flood protection dyke where the ground level rises sharply by about a metre. Water didn't reach quite as far up the last time this happened on 17th Feb 2020. I walked up to the Western Avenue road bridge and there the water was spilling over on both sides of the river, and the Taff Trail was awash. 

Up until now remedial work on a few places on the banks and riverbed undertaken after the last big inundation have contained heavy flow pretty well. The volume of water and the speed at which it's being dumped by storm 'Bert' suggest a higher scale of magnitude, such as was seen recently in Valencia, on a much bigger scale given the size of the mountains and area of the watershed. I wonder what more can be done in the flood plain occupied by the city, to improve flood protection further? 

I got home just after sunset, a mile short of my daily target. I didn't want to get any wetter than I already was. In the evening we watched Antiques Road show, and then BBC's Young Jazz Musician of the Year. A brilliant and inspiring display of musicianship from competitors aged between 18 and 22. This year a new performance item was added to the programme, in which all four finalists performed a Charlie Parker tune which they'd learned to play together from scratch in the previous 48 hours. Such a joy!