Royston (Iceni) Weather Station

River Ouse Floods - April 2000

The town of Royston and surrounding district lie in the catchment area of the River Ouse which experienced a spell of prolonged rainfall from 2nd to 4th April 2000. This resulted in flooding around Huntingdon (about 30 km NNW of Royston) and some other parts in the catchment.

Luckily this rainfall event was preceded by a very dry March and the flooding was undoubtedly less severe than it could have been. The area has barely recovered from the disastrous floods exactly 2 years ago in April 1998 when a much wider area across the south and west Midlands and East Anglia was affected. On that occasion river flows probably reached or even exceeded the record levels of March 1947.

Royston itself is situated on very well drained chalk and was not affected by either of these flood events. At Royston (Iceni) Weather Station a total of 34.1 millimetres rainfall was recorded between 1800 GMT on 2nd and 1800 GMT on 4th April 2000 during which time rain was actually falling for 41.4 hours out of the 48. This rainfall was not exceptional in either amount or intensity (although it was certainly the wettest period of the year so far!) and was probably less than in some other parts of the Ouse catchment area. A hyetograph of the event can be seen by clicking on the following link.  Rainfall 2nd/4th April 2000

The photographs below are of floods in the Huntingdon area on 6th April 2000. These pictures were taken and kindly supplied to Royston (Iceni) Weather Station by Daniel Barker of Stevenage.

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