Summer 2007 

What a summer!  The great British weather really did give us something to talk about! 

June 2007 rainfall for England exceeded records dating back to 1879.  As far as we are aware though, the national record set by Horncastle for the highest 3 hour period of rainfall has not been broken  - 178mm on 7 October 1960. 

In the Louth area, on 25 June the largest recorded flood occurred on the River Lud (although we know the May 1920 event was substantially higher).  The discharge peaked at around 5 cumecs (cubic metres per second); 221% of the long term average.  The 1920 event is estimated at 140 cumecs.  Most other watercourses in and around the Wolds were also drastically affected. 

The exceptionally intense storm events caused severe flash flooding in many areas.  This is particularly unusual in chalk catchments (including the Wolds) as the underlying geology has a great capacity to absorb rainwater.  However, so intense were the events during the summer that the soil quickly became saturated and water flowed overland into the streams. 

Over the centuries, mans intervention has altered how the land copes with such events, e.g. 

• Improving land drainage, which facilitates removal of water from the land.
• Modification of the channels over the past 200 years, consequently removing any connection with the floodplain.

Water is therefore channelled off the land as quickly as possible. This may seem like a good idea, but where a bottleneck exists, such as at a bridge or mill, severe flooding easily occurs. For the Wolds villages and market towns, this resulted in the worst natural disaster for quite some time.