So today I spent some time at our Didsbury flood storage area - a set up that saved 100s of homes from flooding during #stormchristoph - but also many folk don’t even know it’s there or what it does. So let’s break down what I learnt in this thread......

So here’s a map showing just how wide spread the storage area is - it even includes parks and a golf course - 750000m3 of designed flood storage to take the flood peak off the river Mersey.....

We start the journey here - the sluice inlet where water is diverted from the Mersey to the flood basin (as indicated by Mark’s excellent pointing).....

And during #stormchristoph this is what happened when the Mersey was released...

And what that channel looks like now....

The good news the storage area did its job and saved 100s of homes from flooding in Didsbury. But all of its 750000m3 storage was used - and it can take weeks to drain naturally - so we needed a pumping operation to draw down before the next storm...

So here’s the far end of the basin where we set up the pumping...

The water got up to here (again good #TeamEA pointing) so we needed to pump back into the Mersey.....

Which we have so we are all ready for the next storm. And you can be too by signing up to our flood warnings https://www.gov.uk/sign-up-for-flood-warnings (see what I did there)