Went on a trip down Lancaster hole yesterday 15th Sep to the Minuretes via the high level passages of Montagu east and west yesterday, forecast was rain till 4 but nothing to heavy, when we entered Fall pot the water fall from Cow pot was gushing in from high level, we dropped down the streamway from Montagu at various points to have a look and it was obviously flooding and rose about 8 inches in half an hour, on our return from the Minuretes to exit via Lancaster again there was an ominous silence no sound of the from the streamway at all, I knew what that meant!!, the main streamway had now fully backed up and was no longer flowing but filling up.
Crossing from Montagu East to West, the water level was about 15ft below the lowest point of the crossing, so that meant it had risen about 20 odd feet in a couple of hours along full length of the streamway, to say I was shocked was an understatement.

When we got back to Fall pot, it was flooded upto a point maybe 15ft below the balcony from Montagu and you could see none of the main boulders on the floor of Fall pot and Cow pot was in full flood.

One of our team was willing to swim to the other side about 60ft, but we convinced him it was not a good idea due to unknown currents and swimming with full SRT kit on, this was about 4pm. We decided to sit it out and monitor the levels before attempting any other exit, after half and hour it was definitely going down, after two hours it was low enough to cross on the lhs looking from Montagu, at this point the white memorial plaque was about 5ft above the water, on reflection we could have got across the same point when the plaque was about 1ft out of the water.

All very sobering stuff, whilst I knew Fall pot did back up and flood on occasion, I had no idea it happened this fast and after only a few hours of heavy rain, apparently the river in Ingleton rose about 10ft the same day, the path from Bull pot farm was a river on the way back.

We were lucky I guess as we were only delayed a couple of hours, but if it had kept raining we would have been there much longer and it went through my mind if it kept raining as hard, would it ever flood into Montagu??, our options of retreat into the higher parts of the system could have been cut off if the water came high enough to flood the connection from Montagu west to east.

I can sense the critisesem now, shouldn't have gone down in those conditions etc, but does anyone else know of instances when the whole streamway flooded in 4 hours, we weren't the only ones down there either as there was a team doing the same route but coming out of County, they made it I assume as there was no cars around on the surface.

This is a fairly regular occurrence at Fall Pot and it does indeed flood VERY quickly. In fact, the water does get very close to the top balcony, and probably overflows from time to time - I've certainly seen it about 1m below the balcony. The other thing to be aware of is that Stake Pot will also back up to a point where water flows OVER the lowest crossing point (bottom of the fixed ropes) making retreat back along the high level route impossible. It's highly unlikely that water ever makes it high enough into the high level route to make it an unsafe place to sit it out - I've never heard any accounts of this occurring.

Swimming across Fall Pot is not advised - cold, deep water and there are strong currents from the wave lapping action caused by the Cow Pot water crashing down, which would make exiting the water very difficult (not to mention the slimy mud everywhere).

I'm not certainly not criticizing here, but the forecast for Sunday was very bad, with a weather warning in place all week for gale force winds and heavy rain. With that in mind, I would say it would have been almost a certainty Fall Pot was going to back up. I've been down Lancaster Hole myself in very wet conditions with the intention being to see how high the water in Fall Pot had got and apart from getting pretty well soaked on the pitch, it's not a dangerous place to be. I wouldn't say it's a case of saying "you shouldn't have gone down in those conditions", more a case of being aware of the potential problems that you might/will face in bad weather conditions in that particular place.

Andy

Forecast was lousy for yesterday, including heavy rain - maybe you need to look elsewhere for your reports, but by no means the worst recently.

If you take a quick look at the CDG Vis report - http://www.cavedivinggroup.org.uk/cgi-bin/vis.html you'll find that around 27mm of rain fell yesterdayin Ingleton and Clapham, this is less than a quarter of the rainfall in a few hours at the end of July - 117mm if I remember rightly recorded by JC.

The idea the high level route is safe in all weathers is a myth, I've also seen it just below the balcony.

There was no water to be seen when we got to fall pot, was very misty though! and a few well dropped stones indicated the water was still very deep so probably half way down the boulder choke perhaps? Pitty as we wanted to see Fall pot in flood.

Pete Brookdale said:

There was no water to be seen when we got to fall pot, was very misty though! and a few well dropped stones indicated the water was still very deep so probably half way down the boulder choke perhaps? Pitty as we wanted to see Fall pot in flood.

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Pete,

I take it you were the guys who went down after we left, glad to know you got out ok.

Its not that we didn't know it flooded but I understood that it took a lot longer to get to that level, you live and learn, but looking at the metcheck and "will it rain" beforehand suggested that the weather system would track further north and there would be about 5mm of rain

Don't know much about Metcheck but the Met Office Mountain Weather service always seems to prove fairly accurate & is tailored specifically to comment on conditions on the hills.
www.metoffice.gov.uk/loutdoor/mountainsafety/

Be even better if they extend it to all the UK's upland areas...

adep said:

Pete Brookdale said:

There was no water to be seen when we got to fall pot, was very misty though! and a few well dropped stones indicated the water was still very deep so probably half way down the boulder choke perhaps? Pitty as we wanted to see Fall pot in flood.

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Pete,

I take it you were the guys who went down after we left, glad to know you got out ok.

Its not that we didn't know it flooded but I understood that it took a lot longer to get to that level, you live and learn, but looking at the metcheck and "will it rain" beforehand suggested that the weather system would track further north and there would be about 5mm of rain

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Yeah we did what we went in to do and got out to a rather warm evening about 10pm

I know on the surface it chucked it down from 11am onwards to about 4 or 5pm, I avoided caving or doing anything other then watching TV that day lol.

adep said:

One of our team was willing to swim to the other side about 60ft, but we convinced him it was not a good idea due to unknown currents and swimming with full SRT kit on, this was about 4pm.

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Sorry to go off on a bit of a tangent, but does anybody know if anybody's done any tests on buoyancy in caving gear? My instinct would be that you would be likely to sink if you had to swim any distance wearing standard caving gear (i.e. furry suit and over suit), and a full SRT kit. I suspect that you might start off OK as your clothing would trap quite a lot of air, but it would soon become waterlogged and you would start to go under...

Your instinct is correct. No need for testing, sadly there are a number of dead cavers who have demonstrated that this is a poor technique.

I've also confirmed that in my case at least, without SRT kit and standard rather than steel toe capped wellies, I'm still negatively buoyant with a neofleece under my suit.

georgenorth said:

adep said:

One of our team was willing to swim to the other side about 60ft, but we convinced him it was not a good idea due to unknown currents and swimming with full SRT kit on, this was about 4pm.

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Sorry to go off on a bit of a tangent, but does anybody know if anybody's done any tests on buoyancy in caving gear? My instinct would be that you would be likely to sink if you had to swim any distance wearing standard caving gear (i.e. furry suit and over suit), and a full SRT kit. I suspect that you might start off OK as your clothing would trap quite a lot of air, but it would soon become waterlogged and you would start to go under...

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That was my point to our guy, think your SRT kit weighs in the region of 12kg in total some buoyant I guess, but you would have a lot of drag in the water from your suit etc so even if you stayed afloat progress would be hard and there would almost certainly be currents to contend with in Fall pot, plus getting out on slippy mud covered rock assuming you made it to the other side, if I had to do it, reckon I would dangle my metal bits from my harness then I could get rid of them quickly if I got into trouble

Bottlebank said:

Your instinct is correct. No need for testing, sadly there are a number of dead cavers who have demonstrated that this is a poor technique.

I've also confirmed that in my case at least, without SRT kit and standard rather than steel toe capped wellies, I'm still negatively buoyant with a neofleece under my suit.

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You mean you sink then??

adep said:

Bottlebank said:

Your instinct is correct. No need for testing, sadly there are a number of dead cavers who have demonstrated that this is a poor technique.

I've also confirmed that in my case at least, without SRT kit and standard rather than steel toe capped wellies, I'm still negatively buoyant with a neofleece under my suit.

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You mean you sink then??

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Yes. And dangling your metal bits below you makes no difference, most people will sink with or without them. And "sink" is really the wrong word, "drown" is a better choice.

Ive found Metcheck to be rubbish. It claims to predict rainfall to the nearest 0.1 mm some days in advance which is obviously rubbish. It's also claimed 300 mph winds, -250 C temperatures and zero atmospheric pressure on certain occasions. Very well this is a bug in the software but if it makes it out onto the website for some time then theyre process of evaluating what their computer says is pretty poor. I've found the met office mountain service for the Dales (and Lakes is relevant if you're in the western dales) to be pretty good one day in advance.

Yeah, we had light rain from 10am till just after dinner when you couldn't see for rain then it eased off and stopped by about 2-230ish Quite pleasant after that. Bear in mind that was here in Ingleton but fairy consistent over toward Kirkby Lonsdale I would have thought.

Speleotron said:

Ive found Metcheck to be rubbish. It claims to predict rainfall to the nearest 0.1 mm some days in advance which is obviously rubbish. It's also claimed 300 mph winds, -250 C temperatures and zero atmospheric pressure on certain occasions. Very well this is a bug in the software but if it makes it out onto the website for some time then theyre process of evaluating what their computer says is pretty poor. I've found the met office mountain service for the Dales (and Lakes is relevant if you're in the western dales) to be pretty good one day in advance.

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Think Metcheck went through a period of severe neglect when the guy who ran it got banged up it is now pretty good I find, the figures you are referring to were obviously well wide of the mark due to software glitches and the already mentioned neglect, although whats wrong with predicting 0.1mm of rain??, this obviously quite often doesn't fall and I take it more as meaning its going to be overcast

I just thought it was dubious how they thought they could predict how much it would rain in the lakes or dales to the nearest 0.1 mm a few days in advance, it just made me suspicious about their interpretation of what the computers tell them as such accuracy is completely impossible.

The forecast we heard for yesterday was 'heavy rain from mid-morning onwards', so we decided not to bother with WHite Scar Cave. As Alex remarks, it started to rain about 11 am, as we were pottering around on the surface at Alum pot, so after a sojourn in a well-known Dales caf?, we set off for home via Kingsdale . . . where the water was almost up to the entrance of Yordas Cave.
We stopped at Devil's Bridge (Kirkby Lonsdale) to see if the R. Lune had started to respond, and watched as the water rose; I'll  try and post some pictures if I can sort out the new Flick'r system.

In spite of having seen all the water, I'm nevertheless astonished that it rose so far so quickly in Lancaster Hole; I've seen water about 18 m deep at Fall Pot (with obvious concomitant backing a long way upstream) but that was after very wet weather over several days (~5 in rain at Kendal).

I must admit I also didn't realise it could fill up to that depth quite so quickly (live and learn), although there was (as said above) some pretty heavy rain in the area and short period intense rain can cause as much trouble as less intense / more prolonged rain, the difference being it rises and falls quickly. Looking at the CDG Vis shows it hadn't been that wet the previous week either, so it's not like the ground was particularly saturated.

By about 5.30-6.30, as I was driving up to the Dales, the Lune and it's tributaries were well and truly 'up'. Ease Gill had plenty of water in the beck. The path from BPF was a river at 7pm but had eased to a trickle by 10.

As for Metcheck, I did have a spell of using it ages back but the forecasts seemed to be getting suspect so gave up and used a few other sites instead. I never trusted 'mm' rain predictions - I merely used those as a rough guide - e.g. larger number-more rain.
I currently use a mixture of (depending on my mood, more than anything I think): BBC, MetOffice (general and mountain), XCWeather, MWIS.

Speleotron said:

I just thought it was dubious how they thought they could predict how much it would rain in the lakes or dales to the nearest 0.1 mm a few days in advance, it just made me suspicious about their interpretation of what the computers tell them as such accuracy is completely impossible.

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All done by computers these days, and does what the programme tells it to do