A Very Wet Xmas in Maidstone – River Medway Floods Town Centre

These photos are from Boxing Day when i took a trip along the Medway River in Maidstone from the footbridge in Tovil to the Archbishop’s Palace about a mile downstream. The water levels were higher than this a few days before but you could still see the carnage caused by water being in places it is not supposed to be. Of particular concern were the fully functioning street lights beaming away along the the riverside while submerged in 3 feet of water.

December 2013 has been a very strange month weather-wise around Kent – one day the sun has been shining and the weather is lovely and autumnal, the next day the heavens open and a torrent of gushing wet water falls to the ground and ruins all the dry stuff and everything. And then it keeps going. And then really strong winds come and smash stuff. And then its lovely and sunny. And then it starts raining again – really hard. And this has been going on for most of the month. Of course this bad weather is nothing compared to the extreme hurricanes and other stuff often arriving in the american mid-west for example, but relatively speaking, this is pretty rough stuff for poor old Blighty. And, as usual, we are never prepared for it – tens of thousands of homes have been without electricity since Christmas Eve and many may not get power back until the new year.