London floods

Hope no-one on here has been affected too badly by all this. No apparent issues up here in North-east London, but I'm sure our turn will come eventually.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/london-travel-chaos-rain-flooding-weather-met-office-warning-b1183694.html

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/travel-updates-latest-flooding-tube-lines-tfl-national-rail-trains-a3-m25-b1183484.html

Not London but is been a miserable day in Oxfordshire too. Heavy rain all day, think we’ve been in the middle of the storm as it’s swirled around. Both brother and parents at risk so feel for those affected in London, those pictures and reports look bad

Ruislip Manor, (unfortunately routine), and Ruislip Tube stations closed due to flooding, and potentially loss of power.
West End Road closed under Central Line rail bridge in Ruislip Gardens due to flooding of the western branch of the Yeading Brook.

Breakspear Road South axle deep standing water under the Chiltern Line bridge, but this may have been exacerbated by recent HS2 activities.

2nd highest level recorded in the last 11 years of the River Pinn through the campus of Brunel University.

Hope you and yours will be OK.

Pfft, call that London? :)

It's almost as if there are watercourses in the area.

2nd highest level recorded in the last 11 years of the River Pinn through the campus of Brunel University.

Shirley they must be prepared?

https://www.brunel.ac.uk/research/Groups/Flood-Coastal-and-Water-Engineering

Not only that^:
https://www.brunel.ac.uk/research/Centres/flood-risk-and-resilience

WTF? I was doing a rubbish clean up on the Thames at lunch today and it barely sprinkled.

The rain was mostly yesterday and overnight, with disruption still felt today. If, as I imagine you did, you cycled to your clean-up, you wouldn't have seen public transport problems. Either that or #hippyhasalltheluck .

I must have been very localised, I saw this across the river

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We were camping at the weekend...

Things got a bit wet.

Nah, I rarely ride in London any more. Crossrail then walked. I got soaked on Sat so maybe it gave me a break knowing I'm going to be back on the bike properly soon.

Yeah, Ealing was pretty dry, but my mates were driving to Wales and it hammered them.

yes, no reports of Crossrail being affected (that I can see). It does seem to have targeted @mespilus this time.

I'm all for shit weather to target anyone else. I had enough of it 10 years ago to be honest.

The Pinn is pretty peaky. The heavily urbanised catchment, with too many paved-over front gardens, and the Thames Water surface water network draining roads straight into watercourses, means the Pinn's level starts to rise within a few minutes of a downpour.
Here's the data from the Environment Agency River Pinn level gauge in Ruislip.
Most of the rain was overnight, Sunday into Monday, after a damp Sunday.

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How does regulation around private paved areas work in London, does anyone know?

We have loads of talk about sponge city (Schwammstadt) in Berlin, and they actually made some parking spots into flowerbeds here, but I don't see courtyards getting unsealed.
Can't help but think that rewards for unsealing your front garden/courtyard would be a good thing.

We, or least England, as flood management is a devolved power, have a complete set of legislation, Sustainable Drainage Systems, SuDS, but little enforcement.
More than 5m2 of front garden to be paved over requires Planning Permission from your Local Authority/Council, but most turn a blind eye.

Don't think it automatically requires planning permission so long as you use certain types of surfacing (one that drains) and or you have draining put in. We had a drive put in a few years back, but we had drainage put in and maintained a hedge on 2.5 sides of the drive.

It's basically not regulated well and what little regulation exists is both hard to enforce and generally not enforced (exceptions apply).

There was talk from Thames Water about cheaper bills if you had a front garden rather than hard paving, but nothing has come if it, and the way things are going Thames Water won't be around long enough to decide or implement it anyway

Was a lot of water coming down yesterday.
I think Germany also has rules about percentage of outside area covered, but good luck getting that info and big lol regarding enforcing that.
Cheaper bills sounds like a plan, imagine if you paid less tax if your garden was nice for insects and other animals!

Quite damp out under foot this morning. Clearly we didn't arrest enough Climate Change protestors.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/flooding-wimbledon-totally-predictable-river-cherry-red-stadium-b1186491.html

Marylebone road around the Euston underpass was underwater this morning with, what I assume to be, a burst water main.

Couldn’t see anything in the news though.

I'm pretty certain we've discussed the underlying geology of London, somewhere on the forum.
Have a look at these slide shows from the recent ColneCAN conference.