So dry!

It's been so dry here for a while, which is unusual.  We live up in the Pennines and its main feature is drizzle, year-round drizzle.

But now the streams are drying up, the moorlands are suffering terrible fires and the wildlife are starting to suffer.

If you don't have a pond or any other water feature in your garden, in particularly hot and dry weather think about putting a bowl or tub of water out in your garden for passing wildlife and birds.

One very hot, dry year mum had a hedgehog drowned in her drain as it tried to get to water and got stuck facedown.

We put a shallow tub of water in the garden for any thirsty creatures and we've just had a frog wetting it's skin in the tub I put in the garden (with a stone added to help him hop out) being amphibians, they need to keep their skin moist.

Snow!

Oh my goodness, I just love snow.

L calls the snow drifts - 'snow dunes', hahaha.

We had to pop out to the shop as there was a dire emergency!  We'd run out of coffee!!  The horror!

Torrential rain and a flood...nearly

We've had some torrential rain today.  So much so that our church has had to cancel it's youth club tonight due to flooding.

Up at our house L and I worked hard to prevent the water from coming up too high (B and G weren't at home).

We were soaked but successful.

However, I managed to break my phone! I got soaked and my phone was in my back pocket! It didn't work for ages, it was all wet inside. Then managed to get it to work, but it keeps going into 'car mode'! So I've switched it off for a bit.  Hubby is not impressed haha, I have a habit of breaking mobile phones.

Getting far to near our back door!!

Sweeping water out of the gate!

For Prayer and Rainy Day Photo Safari

Please pray for the residents of Hebden Bridge a town about 9 miles away from us, they've been hit for the second time in recent weeks by awful floods: Flash Floods

We've had a goodly amount of rain, here's pics from a recent walk:

The lake has filled up nicely.

Lake overflow is overflowing :)

The stile is a waterfall

Almost to the roof of the bridge

River almost to its limit.

River bursting its banks.

The lane is a river

Which is river and which is path?

Shall we swim to the gate?

A bit soggy.

It's been a bit damp around here

 Local flooding last weekend - Flickr

Click on the picture for a better view.

We had torrential rain today. Monsoon like. Fortunately it only lasted half an hour or so otherwise I'd have been paddling about in my house.  Just shutting the kitchen door at work soaked me to the skin. We've had some really bad weather locally particularly last weekend. On Friday night at a birthday party I spoke to someone who wasn't able to get home due to the flooding problems.

Here are some videos taken in a couple of nearby towns:

In this first video the centre of the town was badly flooded, someone I know lives on the hill behind this pub. Her house was OK but her car was damaged.



In this next video the canal has burst its banks:



Waist deep water on the main street:



It's sheer volume of water pouring down from the hills that feed into the River Calder, in this next video you can see the differences of during the floods and after, the water level change is amazing:



For those of you who are interested I just wanted to add this video, it's interesting because you can hear the flood warning siren going off at the beginning and it gives and overview of the area (this is all about 5 miles away from our house):

In the bleak midwinter...

Today I needed to buy some more Christmas cards and pop into the bank, so we walked into the village (it's about 2 miles). We did a bit of sledging on the way.

The snow is really coming down today, it's quite deep in places.

Tiring work!

Mr Snowman's face is almost covered in snow!

Big icicles

I was so relieved when we got home. It's uphill all the way back, my legs were aching so much. I'm going to have a hot cup of coffee now.

How's the weather where you are?