I know Kendal pretty well, and have parked on that car park. Scary.

Best of luck, fella.

Good luck Bagfish

Fingers crossed for you

Wow!

That's incredible

Good luck to anyone threatened by flooding, particularly those in Cumbria.

Awful scenes for the folks affected.

Amazing - thanks for all the updates. 352mm works out at 14.02 inches. That is amazing. No wonder there is damaging flooding in the areas.

Keep us informed with all the latest photos if you can. Us lot in East Anglia cannot visualise anything like this. :-O

Astonishing! An unprecedented amount of rainfall.

Dreadful for those affected, thoughts are with them. Incredible, but awful 

Aye, and it's unlikely to be the wettest place.  Any figures for Seathwaite yet?

Styhead/Sprinkling tarn area likely to be significantly higher, though I don't think there's any daily gauges there anymore.

The Jaws of Borrowdale generate a particular strong orographic forcing. I wonder how the twin bridges at Grange are coping

Met Office 1.30 pm today reporting a 24 hour maximum so far of 263 mm at Shap: to be confirmed with data still incoming (Official record stands at 279 mm)
  PS: I should add that that is for a 'rainfall day' (0900-0900) The max 24 hours is 316.4 mm (Seathwaite 2009)

 The Mayor of Keswick Paul Titley tells BBC News water levels are the highest he's ever seen.

"The flood defences were designed for a one in 100 year event and since it's six years since we had the last one, we were sort of surprised that we got one so soon. I think they did work but they were just completely overwhelmed by just the sheer amount of rainwater we had. The river was 5.4 metres above ground this year. In 2009 it was 4.6 metres. And 4.6 metres had sat there as the target that we never wanted to breach again."

Pity the poor mayor.

I think the government and its agencies need to wake up and smell the coffee.  A changing climate brings changing extreme weather events.  Build those defences higher.  They need to be thinking 1 in 500 year event based on past data.

Seeing the reports on Sky News are quite shocking. Amazing rainfall totals

I can hear the AGW camp splashing through the water in desperate attempts to salvage their documents in order to present their Christmas message to whoever will listen

Yes, thank you for that party political broadcast by the Green party.

Well the water stopped one house down from ours and stayed there most of the night before receding.  So much damage though.  Here's some photos.....

This used to be tarmac. One of the garages here is full of vintage cars being done up.

River went well above the bridge deck

Huge damage to property

The floodwater has nowhere to go

NExt photos were taken by a guy called Matt Hardcastle who saw Pooley Bridge on a main road in and out of the Ullswater Valley collapse in front of his eyes. Please credit Matt if you use his photos https://www.facebook.com/mat.c.hardcastle

And saving the best/worst for last

This is the A591 between Grasmere and Keswick.  It's the main route through the central Lake District, and it is completely destroyed north of Dunmail Raise and along Thirlmere.  Photos taken by Paul Hetherington https://www.facebook.com/paul.hetherington.5 please credit him if you use them.

To be honest, the state of the county reminds me most of the scenes of devastation you see in countries hit by hurricanes rather than an Atlantic depression.  So many landslides on roads and railways.  I can't see how we're going to be able to get back to normal any time soon.

Incredible photos Bagfish. Glad to hear you're safe though.

Looks like utter devastation 

Thanks. Books and valuables staying moved until we see what happens tomorrow night.  More rain expected, so could be in for round two

You're not wrong there. This is pick of the rainfall charts from next week. Thur-Fri. 

Rain on and off before then, too 

Oh good grief.  We seriously need a break, it's been raining pretty much constantly since October.