Just a heads up to warn the current rainfall of 3.6mm per hour will see water course levels rising substantially throughout Freuchie over the next few hours. Be prepared to deploy your flood protection products.
Photo: Freuchie Mill culvert at 4:30pm on 4th February 2011
Photo: Freuchie Mill culvert at 6:10pm on 4th February 2011
It has been reported to FFAG that some Freuchie Mill residents are oblivious to how close we were to another major flooding disaster in the early hours of Sunday morning. This blog post will provide some more detail on the decision making and events of Sunday morning.
Committee members of FFAG stood at the side of the culvert whilst debating the point at which we would sound the flood warning alarm (airhorn). In light of the early hour, or late hour depending on your skew, we decided on a fairly high water level mark that would still facilitate sufficient time for residents to safely move cars and other property to areas of safety. The Pitilock Burn rose to within 3 inches of that point or about an estimated 30 minutes of rainfall. This warning level would still have allowed about another hour before flooding would have occurred across Freuchie Mill. Thankfully the rainfall reduced and the water level started to slowly fall.
Residents who were aware of the ongoing drama decided to move their property early and fully deploy all their flood defences during this event. Flooding looked to be only hours away based on what we were seeing unfold in front of our own eyes!
We’ve received praise and thanks from a few residents for how useful the images from the webcameras were to them. Our webstats show a 500% increase in normal traffic for Saturday and Sunday with a peak on Sunday of 140 pageviews for the webcamera page. The way this service is delivered will be changing in the near future. More on this in a future blog post.
This incident also highlights the weather forecast for Freuchie was wrong. Anyone who looked at the online forecasts or the TV broadcast will know they weren’t predicting this amount of rainfall for Fife, never mind Freuchie. Normally the meteorologist do a magnificent job but on this occasion they fell short of the mark for us.
Technorati Tags: FFAG, Fife, flooding, Freuchie, Freuchie Mill
Water course levels have steadily fallen since the last post… thankfully.
Photos: Freuchie Mill culvert @ 9am
The 26.4mm of rainfall experienced over the last 24 hours wouldn’t normally have been a cause of major concern but the frozen and saturated ground and remainder of the snowmelt made for a worrying few hours in the early hours of this morning.
Graph: Cumulative Rainfall graph for the last 24 hours
There will be many Freuchie residents having a wee sleep during the day today! Lots of sleep to be caught up on.
Freuchie really dodged a bullet last night. An hour or two more of warm front rainfall would have seen flooding occurring again in our village. We hope everyone else at risk of flooding in Scotland and elsewhere in the UK also survived unscathed.
The residents of Freuchie are in major flood watch preparedness.
2am Update 
Freuchie Burn running at about 60% capacity in the centre of the village.
Water channel at The Feus running high.
Freuchie Mill culvert alarmingly high and still rising with the moderate and heavy rainfall falling on Freuchie and surrounding area.
Photos: Freuchie Mill culvert @ 2am
4am Update
Freuchie Mill residents are closely monitoring the water level at the culvert. Many cars have already been moved to safety and flood defence products are deployed as a precaution.
Fingers and toes are crossed for the next few hours to be relatively rain free. Flooding will occur if the next few hours sees the same rainfall as the last few hours.
Photos: Freuchie Mill culvert @ 4am
We would already be reporting massive property damage again on the scale of the 13th August 2008 event if it wasn’t for the reinstatement of the diversion pipe a few years ago and the surface drainage improvements scheme completed in 2009. Once again the residents of Freuchie Mill thank Cllr MacDiarmid and everyone at Fife Council for getting the drainage improvements completed before this current incident. Time to redouble of efforts before we get an event that we cannot survive!
Technorati Tags: flood, flooding, Freuchie, Freuchie Burn, Freuchie Mill, Greentree Brae, The Feus
SEPA has multiple “Flood Watch” warnings in force throughout Scotland, including Fife rivers and watercourses.
The Met Office has both Flash and Severe weather advisories in force throughout Scotland.
Here’s hoping no one in Scotland has been flooded and stays safe throughout tonight.
Technorati Tags: flood, flooding, Fife, Met Office, Scotland, SEPA
It is well over a year since we experienced such high water course levels here in Freuchie. Mother Nature has been kind to us on the rainfall front over the last 15 months. However the saturated ground and remaining snowmelt is now making for a more precarious period than would normally be the case. Concerned residents are closely monitoring the levels and many are prepared with their flood protection products.
Photos: Webcamera images from Freuchie Mill @ 3pm
Luckily most of the severe weather has went around Fife resulting in only 12mm (@3pm) of rainfall since midnight. The ramifications of a heavy rainfall day (30 – 50mm) are just too horrific to contemplate!
Technorati Tags: flood, flooding, Freuchie, Freuchie Mill
From Wikipedia:
In hydrology, snowmelt is surface runoff produced from melting snow. It can also be used to describe the period or season during which such runoff is produced. …
Even before the period of severe weather has come to an end, residents throughout Freuchie are increasingly concerned about the effect of snowmelt on the watercourses and the possibility of flooding. Fingers are well and truly crossed for a slow thaw next week!
It is worth checking out your flood protection products if you’ve not already done so this season.
BT Openreach has got us back up and running again after the 28 hour outage.
The weatherstation data and webcams are available again.
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BT Openreach is currently working on restoring the landline outage that has prevented the weatherstation and webcams from functioning. They have temporary traffic lights on the B936 between Freuchie and the Newton of Falkland while they work on the main cables at the side of the road.
Technorati Tags: BT Openreach, Freuchie, Newton of Falkland
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