Marlborough’s Krumbz Café in Kennet Place sits right beside the River Kennet. On Thursday (February 6) they needed stepping stones for customers to get in and on Friday morning they had between one and two inches of water on their floor.
This was from rainwater draining down from the top of the town which should have gone into the river but was being forced back by the pressure of the very full river. This area is the bottom of the town and used, after all, to be called The Marsh.
However, Krumbz’ staff soon mopped up and they were open during Friday as usual.
But they were a bit worried about the still increasing flow of water from Thursday night’s rain. That heavy rainfall on the land upstream was reaching Marlborough by about 4.30pm on Friday and the river level was rising again quite quickly.
By 16.45pm on Friday the level had reached 0.78 metres as measured by the Environment Agency’s automatic monitoring station – see below for graph.
That is the highest level recorded during the current flooding danger. And it is significantly above the Agency’s ‘highest recent’ level of 0.69 metres recorded in March 2008.
At 5.00pm the level was still at 0.78 metres but it looked very much as though the level could rise further still during the evening.
Any further rain overnight on Friday would certainly cause worries in Kennet Place and might bring more problems for Krumbz Café.
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