Storm surge washes road away in Rye Harbour Nature Reserve

We'd heard that there was some significant damage in the Rye Harbour Nature Reserve due to Thursday night's storm surge, so we wandered down there at high tide today for a look... What's worth knowing is that this road was built in the 1940s and this is the first time the sea has ever come over it. That tells us something about the magnitude of this storm surge and the rise in sea levels over the past 60 years (about 10cm, or 4")...

There's also a video that some of the staff took of it at high tide on Friday:

What seems to have happened is that the tide got high enough to wash over the top of the road and plunge over the other side - there are several points where there are holes created by the water:

with the scoured shingle from under the road spread out beyond them:

But in some places the scouring went a bit further...

One of the passing places has collapsed:

and in another area the scouring caused the whole road to cave in:

this of course led to more scouring on the upstream side of the collapsed road:

and then scenes like this:

Parts of the road are now some distance away...

and another slab is a bit lower than it used to be:

The force of the water had also pushed the fence over and uncovered an electricity cable:

Part of me wishes I'd been there on Thursday night to watch it happen, but it probably wouldn't have been the safest place to be... Bizarrely I may have been the last person to cross this bit of road before it fell in, as I went for a night-time bike ride down there on Thursday evening (with some very bright LED lights) and crossed this part of the road at about 9:30pm - it would have caved in at about 1am.

Mike

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High tide flooding in Rye

I went down to the quay this lunchtime to see how high the tide got... It was the highest I've ever seen it, though a I guy I was talking to said he'd been there at 1am last night and it had been at least a foot higher. Here's a short video, and then some pics:

Apparently last night this car was covered up to the top of the wheels:

How or why they'd managed to park this side of the flood barriers I don't know... I guess the windows are open to help it dry out! I was told that the water had been spraying through the flood barrier wall here, where it was still accumulating at high tide today:

The evidence of this could still be seen - silt on the pavement:

There was also some seepage going on today:

And the flood barriers were still closed:

Glad it wasn't any worse!

Mike

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