Category: River Mole
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Levelling up? Uneven patterns of recent rainfall highlight characteristic river response and signpost future management strategy in the River Mole catchment.
Thunderstorms tracked across the Lower Mole basin in the early hours of 29 June 2023 but they largely missed the Upper Mole. The storms were much heavier over the Lower Mole to the north of the catchment over places like Molesey and Esher. In contrast the Upper Mole catchment to the south of Dorking received…
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Are the finger prints of Climate Change over the fish die-off in the Upper Mole?
A significant and very saddening fish die-off occurred on Sunday 11 June – Monday 12 June 2023 in the Upper River Mole between Charlwood and Horley along the realigned channel below the confluence of Man’s Brook. This post outlines the nature of the location, details of the event itself and explores some possible causes.
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Storms last week show how events in the Upper Mole control discharge through the whole drainage basin
Unsettled weather last week featured a good deal of showery convective storms over different parts of the Mole catchment each day. How these rainfall events contributed to discharge downstream highlights many of the unusual characteristics of the Mole catchment and how it deals with inputs of precipitation. Here’s a diagram to remind us of some…
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From deluge to drought… building resilience in the River Mole catchment by “spongifying” the landscape!
In this post, I review flood management in the Mole catchment as it is now, including other nature based schemes; I also look at the benefits of Natural Flood Management and how they can contribute to flood control, reduction of pollution and increase resilience to drought; I also review NFM techniques, including benefits and potential…
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Lords Almighty! Causes of storm overflows, solutions to pollution and securing a future sustainable water supply.
What are the causes of river pollution and what recommendations are made by the Lords Report to improve river health and secure water supply for future generations?
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Making Mole Hills out of Mountains: Part 3
This is Part 3 of the epic story of the formation of the River Mole catchment and the Weald. It’s a challenge piecing together the key events of the Tertiary relating to the Mole landscape. This post has become a discussion weighing up different theories and following threads of evidence from various articles and references.…
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Making Mole Hills out of Mountains. Part 2: The Mesozoic Trough
Part 2 of the formation of the River Mole landscape: this post covers the 200 million years of the Mesozoic era in which the rocks comprising the surface of the Weald were laid down.
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News! Real-Time storm discharge data now available from Thames Water
Some significant news on river pollution! Thames Water have today 4/01/2023 released a “live” map showing near real-time data on storm discharges at their sewage treatment plants. This is useful to identify how often and how long storm overflows occur. Thames Water want to be more transparent and open about their storm discharge activity. We…
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Development threats to runoff in the Upper Mole Basin
Analysis of potential impacts on runoff and river flow of three developments in the Upper Mole basin.
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Rainfall intensity rules River Mole runoff, to a point.
Bit of a cryptic title but this follows my previous post on how our flashy local river responds to rain. Two recent contrasting rainfall events occurred at the tail end of this wet November and it struck me how the Mole responded quite differently to these. So in this post I have drawn up hydrographs…
The Mole Story 