{"id":33070,"date":"2020-02-17T07:17:51","date_gmt":"2020-02-17T07:17:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?p=33070"},"modified":"2020-02-17T07:17:51","modified_gmt":"2020-02-17T07:17:51","slug":"tylorstown-landslide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2020\/02\/17\/tylorstown-landslide\/","title":{"rendered":"Did South Wales suffer a coal waste landslide yesterday?"},"content":{"rendered":"<h4>Did South Wales suffer a coal waste landslide yesterday?<\/h4>\n<p>Yesterday morning the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.metoffice.gov.uk\/\">UK Met Office<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/metofficestorms\/status\/1228943619312291840\">issued a rare red rainfall warning for South Wales<\/a>, as a result of Storm Dennis.\u00a0 This was a prescient act as the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/uk-51526879\">rainfall duly triggered extensive flooding and a number of significant landslides<\/a>. <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?s=south+wales&amp;submit.x=0&amp;submit.y=0&amp;mswhere=blog\">South Wales is a landslide prone environment<\/a> &#8211; the Welsh Valleys have many natural landslides and, of course, many more that are a legacy of the mining coal mining that so dominated this area for many decades.<\/p>\n<p>One particular landslide is of interest, and may be of real consequence.\u00a0 This occurred close to the village of Tylorstown, at approximately 51.656, -3.434. A part of the event was captured on a video that was posted to the front page of the BBC News website.\u00a0 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=M9eaOQoFdfY\">There is a version of it on Youtube<\/a>, though I suspect that this is not the original:-<\/p>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Landslide in South Wales as region suffers worst flooding on record\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/M9eaOQoFdfY?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<p>.<\/p>\n<p>On Twitter, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/OwenHenblwyf1\">Owen Griffiths<\/a> posted a <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/OwenHenblwyf1\/status\/1229051629262995458\">very helpful panoramic image of the site of the landslide at Tylorstown<\/a>:-<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_33075\" style=\"width: 809px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-33075\" class=\" wp-image-33075\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2020\/02\/20_02-Tylorstown-1.jpg\" alt=\"Tylorstown landslide\" width=\"799\" height=\"500\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2020\/02\/20_02-Tylorstown-1.jpg 1140w, https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2020\/02\/20_02-Tylorstown-1-300x188.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2020\/02\/20_02-Tylorstown-1-1024x640.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2020\/02\/20_02-Tylorstown-1-768x480.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 799px) 100vw, 799px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-33075\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Panoramic view of the landslide at Tylorstown in South Wales on 16 February 2020. <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/OwenHenblwyf1\/status\/1229051629262995458\">Photograph posted to Twitter by Owen Griffiths<\/a>.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>.<\/p>\n<p>Based upon that image, I interpret the landslide as occurring on the slope shown in the Google Earth image below:-<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_33077\" style=\"width: 810px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-33077\" class=\" wp-image-33077\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2020\/02\/20_02-Tylorstown-2.jpg\" alt=\"Google Earth image of the location of the Tylorstown landslide\" width=\"800\" height=\"601\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2020\/02\/20_02-Tylorstown-2.jpg 1163w, https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2020\/02\/20_02-Tylorstown-2-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2020\/02\/20_02-Tylorstown-2-1024x770.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2020\/02\/20_02-Tylorstown-2-768x577.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-33077\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A Google Earth image of the possible location of the Tylorstown landslide in South Wales on 16 February 2020.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>.<\/p>\n<p>The origin of the landslide appears to be a spoil heap on the valley wall.\u00a0 The <a href=\"https:\/\/maps.nls.uk\/geo\/explore\/#zoom=14.724612272243235&amp;lat=51.6553&amp;lon=-3.4262&amp;layers=172&amp;b=1\">historic 1920-1940 Ordnance Survey map<\/a> shows the route of the spoil conveyors from the Tylorstown Colliery (also shown on the map as Pendryrys Colliery) to this location, <a href=\"https:\/\/maps.nls.uk\/geo\/explore\/#zoom=14.724612272243235&amp;lat=51.6553&amp;lon=-3.4262&amp;layers=11&amp;b=1\">whilst the 1955-61 map shows spoil at this site<\/a>:-<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_33079\" style=\"width: 810px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-33079\" class=\" wp-image-33079\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2020\/02\/20_02-Tylorstown-3.jpg\" alt=\"Map of the location of the landslide at Tylorstown\" width=\"800\" height=\"544\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2020\/02\/20_02-Tylorstown-3.jpg 898w, https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2020\/02\/20_02-Tylorstown-3-300x204.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2020\/02\/20_02-Tylorstown-3-768x523.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-33079\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><a href=\"https:\/\/maps.nls.uk\/geo\/explore\/#zoom=14.724612272243235&amp;lat=51.6553&amp;lon=-3.4262&amp;layers=11&amp;b=1\">The 1955-61 OS One Inch 7th series map of the location of the Tylorstown landslide,<\/a> showing spoil at the source of the failure.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>.<\/p>\n<p>The photograph of the site suggests that the failure captured on video was only a small part of a larger failure. We need better images, but on first inspection is appears that a large mass has slipped, leaving the large scar that can be partially seen at the rear of the failure, and that a small part of this slipped and disrupted mass has then turned into the more mobile flow captured on video.<\/p>\n<p>Much more detail is needed on this failure than is available at the moment, but since the clean up after the <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2016\/10\/17\/aberfan-disaster-1\/\">Aberfan landslide<\/a> coal spoil tip failures have been rare in Wales.\u00a0 <strong>If<\/strong> (and this is an unknown at this point) this is a coal waste landslide then we need to know why it has occurred.\u00a0 Is it possible that the new, extreme rainfalls that we are now seeing as a result of global heating are rather greater than had been anticipated when the reprofiling was undertaken?<\/p>\n<p>That is a pressing question that can only be addressed by examining this failure properly.<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A significant landslide occurred at Tylorstown in South Wales yesterday. There are indications that this occurred at the site of a coal waste spoil tip.<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on wp_trim_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on wp_trim_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":33075,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[381,469,959,299,205,1033,133,1162,575],"class_list":["post-33070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-landslide-report","tag-coal","tag-featured","tag-landslide-report","tag-mine","tag-mining","tag-spoil","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-wales"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33070"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33070\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}