An anonymous manuscript from Bristol writes about the flooding: January 20th: in the morning being Tuesday at high water there arose such a high flood that the sea drove over the banks and drowned all the marsh country in Wales and on the English coasts. For comparison, the storm flood of 31 January 1953 raised the water along the North Sea coast by 3 to 3.5 meters, but the North Sea is far more susceptible to storm surges. There has been flooding around the Bristol channel a number of times in the past century; in the wet winter of 2014 it was due to the incessant rain, but at other times it was caused by storm surges, the highest of which reached 1.5 meter.