Tomorrow morning we are going down to the south of England for Will and Alex's wedding. We will be camping in their front yard tomorrow night as the wedding is in the middle of nowhere. Unfortunately it just started raining a ton, so it may be a wet night tomorrow too.

The effects of the flood continue to be felt throughout the city. In the city center, most of the flood waters have dropped. But some outlying villages in South Yorkshire are having problems with dams overflowing, and have had to be evacuated.

Transportation is still spotty, with Victoria being unable to take the train to work since Monday (when she couldnt' get home by train, and the train hit a tree on the way to work). On Tuesday she took the tram and then someone picked her up, but they couldn't make it all the way to work, and then the headmaster canceled school eventually as many people couldn't make it, so she had to come home anyway. Yesterday she was getting a ride with the same person, who had a massive asthma attack while driving. So they had to pull over and phone an ambulance. That meant she spent a long time at the hospital before going to work. And today the trains are down again, so she has just given up as she doesn't have a ride now.

One of my co-workers is unable to get into work as there is no bus or train service from his town to Sheffield because of the flood. Another effect is on electricity. Apparently electricity is overtaxed because some power stations blew up in the flood. So now they are having rolling blackouts in the city. The city center will not be affected I don't think because of businesses, but many suburbs will be. Our collegiate campus is currently without power until noon today.

They said we had the equivalent of 6 weeks of rainfall in one day, which is quite amazing really. Unfortunately the forecast for this weekend is heavy rain, which is not what we need right now. I'm afraid the situation may just get worse if there is a lot of rain.

You might be curious to see some photos of where my co-worker Helen lives. She is close to the river and when it burst its banks, the building her flat is in had the ground floor flooded. She's on the top floor, so she didn't have any problem though.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/8310321@N06/sets/72157600486648583/

This image, courtesy of Sheffield City Council, shows one of the busiest roads in and out of Sheffield at the moment. Could be fun to swim in I guess.

Victoria said her train this morning ran over a small tree and nearly derailed. Now the trains aren't even running at all, so a co-worker is trying to get her back home. I imagine with the heavy traffic and lots of flooded roads, this may take a little while. A lot of the buses are canceled as well.

We're now having an even worse rain storm than last week. It's just dumping gallons of rain at a time. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6236348.stm

Luckily our flat does not seem to be having problems yet, but there is a huge amount of rain falling. I think the article says that we may get a month's worth of rain in about a day.