Two hours of moderate to very heavy rain here this evening - the parting gift from the huge storm complex, and one we really could have done with rejecting!
Most local streams are now running at a little way above above normal levels, having peaked at record high levels in the early hours of Tuesday (true for both East Mills Stream and Dockens Water in/near Ringwood, for example)
The Avon is a little above normal and, as usual, it will be the longer-term rainfall that matters most as far as the river is concerned. Unfortunately that looks to be rather high in the near future, with the 18z GFS op run bringing 31.5mm by month's end, which would give a month total of 178.5mm, which beats last year (151.2mm) for my wettest recorded December (though that is only since 2005).
Autumn as a whole looks like being about 70mm drier than that of 2012 (and 100mm behind 2009), yet the flooding I've seen has been worse in peak magnitude, and that all comes down to the fact that Monday into Tuesday delivered a staggering 79.2mm, nearly all within a 24 hour period, which blows away my previous record which I believe is near 40mm (too late to bother trawling through my records for that one right now). The major rivers were barely into flood stage while anywhere with small streams having flash responses saw some truly incredible flooding from around the start of Tuesday to sometime in the afternoon/evening. While stream levels have since fallen a great amount, there's still a lot of residual floodwater out there, and most backroads are smeared with mud and strewn with stones - cycling 30 miles through it all yesterday was an experience I won't forget in a hurry!
No surprise that the last time such a vast rainfall event occured here was most likely during that intense storm at the end of October 2002. For whatever reason, the July 2007 event didn't deliver nearly as much (less than 40mm) here - a lucky escape I suppose.
Originally Posted by: Stormchaser