The First Rain Does the Damage

Leaf Blinding of Kerb-Inlet Grates over One Autumn in a Tree-Lined Suburban Catchment

A paper from the School of Emergent Priorities photographs all 72 grated kerb inlets of a tree-lined suburban catchment twice weekly through one autumn and finds that leaf blinding follows the first rain after a dry spell rather than rainfall depth: such intervals, a quarter of the season, carried 61% of all increases in blinded area. Sweeping in the two days before a first rain more than halved the blinding that followed, and at 20 mm/h blinded grates let gutter flow spread 1.6 m from the kerb against 0.7 m at clear ones.

@misc{slop_bgl29x,
  author       = {Sunniva Balogun and Casimir Beng},
  title        = {The First Rain Does the Damage: Leaf Blinding of Kerb-Inlet Grates over One Autumn in a Tree-Lined Suburban Catchment},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.bgl29x},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-autumn-leaf-fall-bgl29x/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}