Unbelievable the transport chaos we have had in the north east today. Caused by rain over a long period of time. Not exceptional rain just rain that fell steadily for 24 hours.

Today the A1 was shut in several places, the A19 was shut in several places and the A167 was shut in several places.

THere was no way of going north through North Yorkshire, Durham or Northumberland on any major route.

On top of that it was difficult to go east to west as major interchanges were shut ie the A690. A 688, A66 etc.

No trains could travel down the East Coast main line.

And yet most of this was caused in a few small areas where there were dips in the road that became waterlogged.

Yet the combined forces of the whole NE infrastructure could solve it or offer any hope that it will not happen again or again.

I canot wait for winter. With this amount of precipitation and freezing temperatures we should be able to get al least three months off work

Not the first or last time that the A1 has been closed due to the weather - I once sat in a van for six hours one evening in 1978 (the bad winter year) on the incline at Bowburn waiting for a blizzard to blow over - two trucks stuck halfway up the hill managed to bring the whole thing to a halt until a snowplough could get through at around 10pm.

Bloody cold inside a van with no internal linings too.

Mmm, Aberdeen is still there and you can still get to it...

Oh I see, you mean England.

You could only get to Aberdeen if you went up the west coast line and then crossed over !

The North West is not much better , here in Wigan we've had 60 hrs of non stop rain , even for this part of the world that is exceptional...

Or fly

Not exceptional? It was the most intense September storm front in 30 years. That's fairly exceptional IMO.

Surely people could use these to get over the flooded landscape? http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... -pack.html

Surely people could use these to get over the flooded landscape? http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... -pack.html

Yet we still managed to get lorries upto Berwick and Newcastle from Hull.

I would love to see the drivers tachographs and the cost benefirt analysis of having to take a circuitous route to get there based on diesel consumption.

I managed to make it to work but it took me three hours and i was driving down roads i had not used in years. It was funny i was not using any maps or sat nav to get me there i was using a topographical map so that i could travel on higher up ground. !!!!