Looks like rain....

[whitelackington]

Well,
we spent two days deep in our dig of Stainsby's, Mendip,
barely a drip.
Quite pleasant in fact.

 

[potholer]

Perhaps our weather has become more unpredictable over the last 12 months and it might just stay that way. The recent Hospital Cave rescue was the result of a ropey weather forecast IIRC. As I work outdoors I usually keep an eye on weather forecasts, I've certainly noticed a fair few instances where they have been off the mark...

The weather forecast covering Yorkshire for Saturday with three-hourly rainfall predictions that I saw on Friday night at a caving hut seemed bang on the mark, in terms of timing and quantity - gradually increasing from drizzle in the morning to heavy rain early afternoon.

I doubt I could have written a better forecast if I'd written one on Sunday.

 

[dunc]

Well lets all trust the weather forecasts without question from now on as they must be right, just like certain people on this forum who always 'think' they are right too.

 

[Juniper]

People shouldn't believe forecasts blindly, but if someone ignored one they didn't like, I'd hope they had a better reason than just not liking it.

 

[Pitlamp]

In my experience it's often safest to consult as many forecasts as possible and not just rely on one. Sometimes there is a lot of variation (even though they presumably have access to the same data!) but often they are in general agreement. When this happens and the concensus is for rain, we normally do get rain.

The one time of year when forecasts are often wildly out is around May to August, when convectional rainfall in hot humid conditions may - or may not - lead to localised torrential downpours. This was what caused the Mossdale tragedy in the late 60s and also a sudden fierce flood through the GG system in May this year (when 3 miles away it was bone dry). At most other times of the year forecasts have a reasonable success rate.

I actually had to work on Saturday so I was spared the dilemma of whether to go caving after the discouraging forecasts I'd seen. Might as well be stuck at work in weather like that!

 

[docfunk]

I suppose lots of local factors have to be taken in to account regarding forcasting like ground saturation,because this summers rainfall has been stupidly high(in the dales anyway) it will have ben at 100% and any rain that does fall will just run along the surface as the soil/earth can`t soak any more up and will just take the path of least resistance which is in most cases is down the pitch we need to get up ,perhaps if there had not been so much rain this year the soil could have "held" more rain and not flooded underground so quickly.*





*[size=5pt] Or i could be talking shit as I know nothing about forecasting!

 

[paulf]

Really all you need to ask is Me 

Guarantee If I'm coming to Wales it's going to Bloody well Rain hard enough for a trip into DYO to have to be re-arranged again & again

 

[Cave Mapper]

I was going to go caving on Saturday, maybe even to Ireby, but I didn't like the look of the forecast so I stayed at home.

I went down Lost John's on Sunday afternoon, water levels were highish but safe, Valhalla pitch was awesome, absolutely thundering. On the last pitch there was a tide mark of big blobs of bubbly foam half way up the pitch, 20ft above the floor of the chamber. It was eerie and somewhat sobering to abseil down through that line of foam.

 

[hell little caver]

Ireby was lovely! a grim day out as we renamed it!!! wasn't so bad a leaset we on rite side of sump!


Yve was nice to meet u in the blue world if you do want to go caving we were serous and give me a mail or Adam were both on face book I'm Helen Brooke and he is Adam Spillane! checc soon yay yous hould come!!! glad u got out ok!

helliex

 

[Andy Sparrow]

Ireby's not the place to be when it is wet. Wonder why they dident  cancel?

I'm sure they, like a lot of others, saw a weather forecast of some rain for Saturday and not one of very heavy persistent rain all afternoon/evening.
When we went underground at about 11am the Lost Johns stream was what we would have described as normal, Boxhead didn't have much water flowing down it either. By 2.30-3pm (when we were on our way out) enough rain had fallen for the Lost Johns stream to become knee deep and Boxhead to become very wet..

As for Ireby; the opening of the 'Bubbles route' has made access easier in wetter conditions (safer than DDB/Shadow routes anyway) although other parts can still get iffy when it's very wet as Docfunk has revealed!

I think a lot of people were just caught out unexpectedly by the large volume of rain that was dumped in such a short space of time..

I am fairly sure that by Saturday morning the forecast was quite specific about the predicted intensity of the rainfall over the Dales area. 

 

[Juan]

  :-\  Seems quite simple to me

Heavy rain forecast + wet ground => flooding likely => don't go down

 

[Hatstand]

  :-\  Seems quite simple to me

Heavy rain forecast + wet ground => flooding likely => don't go down

While I agree that it sounds simple, I would personally be really wary of saying so, `cause if I then got caught out sometime I'd feel REET stupid - and I am sure that I'd be reminded of what I had said! A lot.

 

[danthecavingman]

Ended up down Carlswark as the safest option in the end.

Good trip - down Eyam Dale Shaft then NW Passage past Big Dig. This was interesting as I'd never seen the stream flowing out of here before. Carried on as far as the rope climb then came back via Cockle Passage and the 'duck', back through the squeeze and headed out the usual way to the Gin entrance.

It was different to see various streams flowing that I hadn't seen before. Where does the water from Big Dig go once it sinks into the cobbly tube near Dynamite Passage?

Dan.

 

[footleg]

There seems to be a lot of sanctimonious ranting in this thread from know it alls who think they never make a mistake. This is neither productive nor helpful. The fact is that there is no 'go caving/don't go caving' flag attached to the weather forecast. Many caves are safe, even a lot more fun with a fair amount of water going down them. Cavers looking for an exciting time (and let's face it, we don't cave because we are looking for a boring leisure activity), often decide that the rain forecast is within acceptable levels. A judgement call has to be made as to whether the conditions are safe or not based on experience and the information to hand. Sometimes people misjudge the conditions, as clearly a good number of experienced cavers did on Saturday. Thankfully nobody was seriously hurt and I expect lessons were learned which might just save people from getting into a more serious situation another time. I know from speaking to someone involved that this was certainly the case down Sunset Hole. Some university freshers had an exciting first trip, but the leaders made the right decisions once they realised the situation they were in, and the freshers had such an exciting trip that they have signed up again for this coming weekend already.

I wasn't caving last Saturday, but I have made the same mistake myself in the past. Going caving when I knew it was wet, I thought it would be exciting, but did not realise the potential for a further rise in water levels over what was already coming through the cave. We learned a valuable lesson, everyone got out unharmed when it was safe to make an exit, and apart from getting told off by the local police Sargent in front of cameras for a C4 cutting edge documentary and appearing on national television no harm was done. For those who were caught out on Saturday, don't worry, the piss taking generally dies down after a year or two. 

 

[Juniper]

There seems to be a lot of sanctimonious ranting in this thread from know it alls who think they never make a mistake.

There also seems to be a bit of ranting from people who seem unable to tell the difference between people simply saying "The weather forecast was X" and people claiming to be personally infallible. That's a straw-man argument, since no-one here has claimed to be infallible.
Some people have just said the forecast they saw was bad enough to make them change their plans for various trips. Do you think they shouldn't say things like that?

Maybe some people involved happened to look at forecasts which were really optimistic and miss the ones that weren't. It'd be interesting if some forecasts really did predict much less rain from such a widespread storm.

When it comes to the future, it's definitely worth having on record what the various forecasts were, to avoid people later misremembering them, as people generally will do. What were the less-bad forecasts like?

I've had some interesting experiences with unexpectedly heavy rainfall, and when there's been a forecast of significant rain I've made judgement calls based on personal knowledge of a cave or asking people who know what it's like when it's wet.
Must be rather harder making a judgement call if a trip has lots of people turning up to it. There'll always be some who'll think a decision to call it off was a wimp-out if even unanimously predicted heavy rain turns out to be lighter than predictions said.

 

[MSD]

I deliberately didn't criticise individuals in my post. I've been rescued myself, so I know what it's like. BUT statistics don't generally lie and what can't be denied is that there have been a considerable number of very serious rescues involving flooding duirng the last year. Anyone can make a misjudgement, but when lots of misjudgements are made it's maybe time to analyse whether there is something more general to learn.

Mark

 

[footleg]

I'm not accusing everyone on this post of being sanctimonious! I just felt that some of the posts had a strong hint of 'those stupid fools who went caving in the rain, I wouldn't get caught out like that' about them.

I agree completely with MSD's comment about learning from misjudgements, not just when there are a lot of them, but in every case there is something to learn. I just don't think that a misjudgement should reflect badly on anybody when I believe any one of us could have got caught out by weather which exceeded our expectations.

 

[C.Raven]

Interesting debate over why flood related rescues seem to be on the up (are they really, or is this just perception?).  I would suggest that by and large the short term forecast information that cavers can receive is far better today than it has ever been.  However, in the 20+ years I have been caving I seem to have the impression that cavers have become more blase about flood risks.  Perhaps ths is a reflection on better techniques and equipment that allow people to cope with harsher conditions inderground?  Or is it that people have been chancing their arm and getting away with it?

I suppose in the old days of ladder and lifeline no p hangered traverse away from the water trips were abandoned a lot sooner, or conducted in a lot better wheather than they would be now.

 

[paul]

I'm not accusing everyone on this post of being sanctimonious! I just felt that some of the posts had a strong hint of 'those stupid fools who went caving in the rain, I wouldn't get caught out like that' about them.

You may be right. Again no criticism intended and bearing in mind we all have 20/20 hindsight and we have probably all had lucky escapes of one form or another.

But some of the posts also give the impression of those caught underground seemed surprised that it rained...
There had been heavy rain during the week and any forecast I saw (including here in the Peaks) mentioned rain for that day.

The CRO's incident reports for that day mostly included "became trapped/delayed by flooding after heavy and persistent rainfall".

The important point is that lessons are learned.

 

[kay]

Interesting debate over why flood related rescues seem to be on the up (are they really, or is this just perception?).  

Over last 9 years in CRO area:
1st figure is no of cave rescues (not including show caves, muddles about dates etc), second is no. of those which mentioned high water levels:

2000     12    3
2001       6    2
2002       5    0
2003     10    1
2004       6    1
2005       5    0
2006     10    2
2007     13    1
2008     13    7

Not sure that this tells us a lot - basically a scattering of flood related incidents each year, with a 'blip' in 2008 from the fact that immensely heavy rain coincided with a Saturday.