The
Boscastle flood of 2004 occurred on Monday, 16 August 2004 in the two villages of
http://www.answers.com/topic/boscastle and
http://www.answers.com/topic/crackington-haven in
http://www.answers.com/topic/cornwall,
http://www.answers.com/topic/england,
http://www.answers.com/topic/united-kingdom. The villages suffered extensive damage after a flash-flood caused by an exceptional amount of rain that fell over the course of eight hours that afternoon. The flood in Boscastle was filmed and extensively reported but that in Crackington Haven was not mentioned beyond the local news. The Boscastle flooding was caused by rainfall which the river could not hold. The floods were the worst in local memory. A study commissioned by the
http://www.answers.com/topic/environment-agency from hydraulics consulting firm HR Wallingford concluded that it was among the most extreme ever experienced in Britain. The peak flow was about 140m³/s (tonnes), between 5:00pm and 6:00pm BST. The annual chance of this (or a greater) flood in any one year is about 1 in 400. The probability each year of the heaviest three-hour rainfall is about 1 in 1300 (although rainfall probability is not the same as flood probability). 7EK * The last time Boscastle had suffered notable flooding was in 1996 as an result of
http://www.answers.com/topic/hurricane-lili-1996, but floods are recorded in 1847, 1957, 3 June 1958 (one man drowned) and 1963. On 16 August, 1952 the small town of
http://www.answers.com/topic/lynmouth, 50 miles (80 km) north-east along the north coast in
http://www.answers.com/topic/devon near
http://www.answers.com/topic/exmoor, suffered extensive damage in a catastrophic flood, in which 34 people lost their lives. Coincidentally this was fifty-two years to the day before Boscastle's 2004 flood.