b29 springwatch - verging on the toasty at last

Igloo, Selly Park

new_folder has captured a beautiful snow construction in Selly Park...

B29 Through The Viewfinder

As I was idly perusing the Birmingham B29 flickr pool today, I came across this rather lovely construction:

It's a Through The Viewfinder (TTV) picture by Pete Ashton of the actual park in Selly Park. TTV pics are often taken by aiming a newfangled digital camera at the viewfinder of a ye olde one, creating some interesting effects. Pete's also in the process of setting up a shop if this has got you slavering to purchase one, and he's got a whole load of other pleasingly wonky pics on his site too.

I also find new_folder often has some fresh takes on B29 ... anyone got any more suggestions of unusual pics of the area?

Get the wellies and cat snorkels out

More heavy rain today meant bad things for the River Rea through Selly Park.


It's high - a few inches below the banks - and the playing fields are all sodden, so more monsoonery and it'll be paddling time again :(. The weather still isn't great, although the river has subsided over the afternoon, so we don't appear to be in critical danger for tonight.

The last Selly Park South Neighbourhood meeting had the Council talking more about improvements to the river under Dogpoo Lane - including apparently the installation of an Environment Agency water gauge so they can tell when the river's high: would be good to get a live feed of that data. However, work won't start till Jan 2010 and take several months, so in the meantime it's back to battening down the hatches and crossing fingers.

The work also includes ripping out the nice old balustrades and replacing them with concrete. Can we get something impressive done with the old ones? Put them in Canon Hill Park maybe?

Flood Action

With more rain forecast, it's an apt time for the Selly Park Community Residents' Association (SPRCA) to hold an AGM to discuss, amongst other things, forming a Flood Action Group with someone from the Birmingham Resilience Team, which appears to be some kind of Council organisation with responsibility for emergency planning. The team has published a nice wallet of ICE info, plus there's a few tips on their site, but it all feels a bit clunky, and not particularly relevant to flooding - there's an emergency phone line but the number will only be given out over local radio ... is that really helpful?

When will the Council manage to grasp the idea that emergency planning might also include providing/collating live info via multiple platforms? I'd like to get an email/tweet if my house was in danger of flooding ... rather than have to be listening to radio WM (*please* don't make me listen to local radio :( ). Much nonsense has been written about twitter and microblogging, but providing live flood info would be an ideal application.

BBC weather forecast for Birmingham for next 3 days (interestingly, despite Birmingham being a large area, the Met Office don't do a finer-grained forecast):

The AGM's on 20th May at 19:30 in Skittle Alley, SPT - or alternatively contact Saima Ali, Ward Support Officer, Selly Oak Constituency on 0121 303 9987 or saima_ali@birmingham.gov.uk.

According to the SPRCA, computer models of the Rea and Bourn Brook are being made to try and alleviate any possible floods in the future. It would be great if these were available online showing real time water levels to help people to judge whether it's time to start moving their stuff upstairs ...

b29 under water

just a quick post to note the floods; the river rea is all over the Selly Park playing fields, with water flowing from Kitchener Road onto them - when we took a look a few hours ago, water was geysering up in the middle through the manholes.

The Bournbrook broke its banks just by Pebble Mill and flooded 3rd, 4th and Sir John's Avenues, and the Pershore Road was flooded at Pebble Mill and Cartland Road.

Here's a video of the river at the bottom of First Avenue:


I took some more pictures, but not of the avenues flooding; I felt like it wasn't very helpful for the people whose houses were disappearing underwater to stand around and take pics of it ... but loads of people did have their cameraphones out so I'm sure there will be lots of pics.

More floodwaters (apologies for the terrible camera angles):


Looks like it's stopped raining, so fingers crossed.

*UPDATE*

Sadly, the water kept rising - the bottom halves of Hobson and Kitchener Roads and Cecil road were really badly flooded, with water levels up to people's thighs. Fashoda Road was half flooded, and you couldn't drive up DogPool lane - there was a fire engine at the junction with Fashoda doing what it could.

The waters did start to subside around 5ish, but that was little consolation for the people whose houses were submerged. One of our neighbours reckoned it was by far the worst flooding for 20 years... and there's more rain forecast for Tuesday with the fallout of hurricane Gustav :(.