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Not sure how much coverage it's getting in the UK but Storm Hans is creating absolute havoc over much of central Scandinavia. Åre is somewhere I've spent a lot of time and I was surprised to hear a river had burst it's banks and flooded the town since I really couldn't remember a river running through the town.
Found the river in question and in normal circumstances it's looks very unthreatening:
https://www.google.com/maps/ @63.3992343,13.0805666,3a,75y,22.56h,91.09t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sLoF7Yl8txqkR0pK5OEkShg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu
I saw this post from Nesbyen Trailhead this morning:
The effect on mountain biking is fairly small compared to the shit show the storm is creating in general but since some people might be familiar with these places I thought I'd post it here. Also, @AnyExcuseToRide is based in Nesbyen so I hope everything is going OK.
One thing I did like was that Nesbyen Trailhead post. They started by giving an update on damage to the trails. Then they happened to mention that the whole town was effectively cut off from civilization. #mtb_priorities 🙂
I am not following the news but that looks crazy. I did wonder if the winds we had the other day was the edge of something bigger
I got caught by the very very tail of that, absolutely smashed it down for 20 minutes, then stopped. Completely back to normal in half an hour. Not much further north and it's closed roads and flooding.
Even got an SMS from my insurers about precautions to take plus government and insurance hotlines to call if there were issues.
We have one member in that part of Sweden and I ma hoping they did not get too badly hit. From the look of the area in the news here, a lot of Åre's town center is pretty badly messed up.
Down here in the north/south (north of Stockholm, south of the actual North), we had a lot of rain in 24 hours and some pretty heavy winds, but managed to avoid the hits that the worst impacted places got. I've seen railway lines undercut and a train derailed and a bunch of places that look like pools.
We were supposed to be starting a week's riding through Cycleactive starting Saturday based in Nesbyen had an email yesterday you can guess the rest 😥 hopefully no loss of life . The pictures on the E mail are pretty devastating.
That's rough. I was planning on a long weekend in Nesbyen next month as a kind of end of summer treat but that's obviously very much in question now. If I was in your situation I'd be really gutted.
I don't know about you but I then feel bad about feeling gutted, given the fact that lives and probably livelihoods have been lost since all I'm missing out on is a bit of riding but I guess that's human nature. I might see if they are planning on having a dugnad (a sort of voluntary community repair and maintenance day) and go along and try to help with that for a long weekend instead of the riding.
I can't imagine insurance would be much use for things like built trails. A lot of the work is voluntary and the monetary value comes indirectly to the entire community.
Bruce yep kind of sums it up for me , I am gutted , 67 years old and with COVID putting the kybosh on overseas trips I'm starting to think it's game over especially as insurance companies don't seem interested once you're over 70 . Unless you've got very deep pockets 🙄😔We did an epic in BC six years ago looking like that may have been our swan song 😔
On the other hand it's people's homes and livelihoods which then makes me feel selfish as you said .
Found the river in question and in normal circumstances it’s looks very unthreatening:
This is a big problem we have (we design flood defences and river restoration etc) you present options for defences in public engagement and they are me with resistance.
"It's never flooded anywhere near that"
"Look at it, it's tiny that's just not possible"
"It will spoil my view"
Etc.
It very ver difficult to make people understand ots not a piffling little thing it's for when the shit hits the fan. And the water isn't just deep it will come with velocity that can destroy your view by taking out the side of your house.
For example Boscastle. I still can't quite believe no one died.
We now design expecting a 1 in 100year even to be 40% worse with the effects of climate change which furthers the disbelief.
It also looks like that river has been straightened and all semblance of floodplain has been obliterated so when that little trapezoidal cross section is exceeded its going to cause havoc.
It also looks like that river has been straightened and all semblance of floodplain has been obliterated so when that little trapezoidal cross section is exceeded its going to cause havoc.
And I'd guess there's thousands of rivers exactly like this one going through towns everywhere that we don't even notice.
The next few decades could get interesting.