{"id":136472,"date":"2025-09-06T06:32:15","date_gmt":"2025-09-06T06:32:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/136472\/"},"modified":"2025-09-06T06:32:15","modified_gmt":"2025-09-06T06:32:15","slug":"drought-impact-damaged-roads-disappearing-rivers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/136472\/","title":{"rendered":"Drought impact: Damaged roads, disappearing rivers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paul MurphyClimate and Environment Correspondent, BBC East Yorkshire and Lincolnshire<\/p>\n

\"BBCBBC<\/p>\n

Spalding Road in Crowland has been closed because of cracks caused by dry weather<\/p>\n

More than 400 roads in Lincolnshire have cracked and crumbled during this summer’s prolonged spell of dry and hot weather. <\/p>\n

Engineers have said the soil beneath many of the county’s routes has dried out, and lost its strength and structure, which they have called a “unique event”.<\/p>\n

Some roads, including Spalding Road in Crowland, have been closed for public safety while ways of repairing the extensive damage are considered. <\/p>\n

The summer of 2025 has been the warmest on record, according to The Met Office, with parts of Lincolnshire receiving less than 30% of their average rainfall. <\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Highways engineer Mark Heaton, of Lincolnshire County Council<\/p>\n

“The roads have moved,” said Lincolnshire County Council highways engineer Mark Heaton. “We need to work out why they have moved, but it’s largely down to Lincolnshire’s poor geology.” <\/p>\n

Fenland areas have been worst hit. <\/p>\n

Mr Heaton has been working with the British Geological Survey to better understand the nature of the soil beneath the roads.<\/p>\n

He said the ongoing research<\/a> was using a technology called Lidar: “We’ve found old water courses [beneath the roads] dating back to the Ice Age. These may be causing weaknesses in the soil.”<\/p>\n

He added that it was very challenging for the authority’s teams to make the affected roads safe for members of the public.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

The soil type beneath roads in Lincolnshire’s Fens has made them especially prone to collapse<\/p>\n

Met Office scientist Dr Emily Carlisle said: “Provisional Met Office statistics show that summer 2025 is officially the warmest on record<\/a> with a mean temperature of 16.10\u00b0C, surpassing the previous record of\u202f15.76\u00b0C\u202fset in 2018.<\/p>\n

It has also been an exceptionally dry period, particularly in England and analysts are attributing this to human-induced climate change.<\/p>\n

Head of climate attribution at the Met Office, Dr Mark McCarthy, said: “Our analysis shows that the summer of 2025 has been made much more likely because of the greenhouse gases humans have released since the industrial revolution.”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Kilnsea Wetlands, an important bird habitat near Spurn, have dried up. <\/p>\n

Kilnsea Wetlands in East Yorkshire is an important source of food and water for thousands of wading birds. <\/p>\n

But the habitat near to Spurn has completely dried up in the baking summer heat. <\/p>\n

Andrew Gibson from Yorkshire Wildlife Trust says this is concerning in the short term but also a sign of how the climate is changing:<\/p>\n

“Wading birds need a certain amount of water for feeding and for their security,” Mr Gibson said. “We may well have a wet winter, but the birds need water now. Climate change is giving us boom and bust.”<\/p>\n

\"BBCBBC News<\/p>\n

Andrew Gibson from Yorkshire Wildlife Trust said important habitats for wading birds have been lost during the extremely dry summer<\/p>\n

In some places, entire rivers and the aquatic life they support have disappeared in the drought. <\/p>\n

The East Glen River at Manthorpe, near Bourne in Lincolnshire, is nowhere to be seen and it is possible to walk along the river bed, past a series of signs warning against swimming and diving.<\/p>\n

Local resident Richard Hartley noted that the same river had overtopped its banks during the flooding of last January, causing extensive flooding. <\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

The East Glen River at Manthorpe, near Bourne, has disappeared in the drought<\/p>\n

\"Signs<\/p>\n

Warning signs on the banks of the dried-up East Glen River in Lincolnshire advise ‘no swimming’ and ‘no diving’.<\/p>\n

Mr Heaton and his highways engineering team now face the challenging task of repairing damage to at least 400 roads in Lincolnshire: “We are going to have to go away and come up with a new engineering solution to tackle these problems, it’s not like repairing a pothole,” he said.<\/p>\n

Whatever engineering solution they find for the county’s crumbling roads will be a burden on budgets.<\/p>\n

“It’s going to be very expensive for Lincolnshire,” he said. “We do get a budget from [the] government to look after our road network, but that doesn’t take into account the poor geology we’re now finding beneath our roads.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paul MurphyClimate and Environment Correspondent, BBC East Yorkshire and Lincolnshire BBC Spalding Road in Crowland has been closed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":136473,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[192,79],"class_list":{"0":"post-136472","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136472\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/136473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}