The luminous crescent moon glimmering against the silhouette of Ambleside church spire on Thursday belied the driving rain that had just fallen during the day. The heavens had opened, causing the biggest downpour in Britain's history with more than a foot of rain (12.3in) falling in 24 hours. The Environment Agency gauge at Seathwaite, for long known as the wettest spot in England, recorded the new "high" – 314.4mm. The deluge triggered mayhem, having already been primed by earlier rain. Sheets of precipitation ran off the waterlogged ground and into the becks and rivers, which stampeded downhill causing landslides and destroying bridges and collapsing embankments. From Buttermere with its landslips of shale spilling across the road above Crummock Water (and with two bridges destroyed near Lorton) to Thirlmere where the A591 was blocked by a landslide, few Lakeland valleys escaped. Waterfalls cascaded down crags, sweeping scree on to roads so that rocks litter the tarmac, some big enough to have smashed through drystone walls and leave gouges in the fellsides in their wake.
The roads in many valleys are closed, with bridges at the time of writing awaiting safety checks. Great Langdale has been cut off, with its locals having to negotiate the challenge of notorious Red Bank, a car's width wide on its one-in-four gradient, for what would ordinarily be everyday journeys. All this pales into insignificance against the flood damage in the towns of Keswick, Cockermouth and Workington caused by torrenting rivers booming down from the hills. Hundreds have been made homeless and PC Bill Barker was killed guiding people away from the Workington bridge, which was about to be swept away by the combined force of the rivers Derwent and Cocker, the town now split from its component part of Seaton. It is in accepting things could have been still worse that Lakeland folk, saddened by events, keep on keeping calm and carrying on in the traditional spirit among these capricious fells.