As a result, many bankside staff and BW contractors were busy managing rising water levels, clearing gullies and weirs of debris blown into the waterways, securing boats that broke loose and removing large branches and even mature trees that came crashing down across the 200-year old network.

BW’s central customer services department alone received nearly 30 calls reporting trees that had been brought down by the strong winds. Some of these trees, particularly along the Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire sections of the Grand Union Canal, crashed onto moored boats, although luckily there were no reports of any injuries to those on board at the time. It’s expected that up to 100 trees will need to be cleared from the 2,200-mile navigable canal and river network, leading to a bill of tens of thousands of pounds for the public corporation.

Water levels that were already high in many UK rivers continued to rise,’ said Eugene Baston, external relations manager at BW. ‘However in many instances our man-made structures proved an ideal mechanism for easing pressures on natural rivers, by allowing additional water to enter the network and then be released into other watercourses elsewhere.’