This winter the worst we had was 3cm in 24h, and the river stayed a good meter below the level of the floor of the mill, so we now have a better understanding of what kind of weather conditions constitute a danger - the rain we had at the end of 2019 was the worst in 70 years or more.
The mill itself is ancient, and built out of enormous boulders, each weighing tens of tonnes, so the structure was entirely unscathed despite being battered to hell by both the force of the water and the debris that came down - everything from trees to trash to trailers. The roof got pretty badly torn up, so we've had a tarp over it for the last year, as we intend to take it off and put a storey on top this year anyway. Overall, while it was a crisis (we waded out in thigh deep water in torrential rain, and had to walk to the nearest village as our car was already gone, cats screaming in their bag... all a bit traumatic tbh), we've turned it into an opportunity - it spurred us into building the cabin, it's shown us what the river can do and what we should therefore plan for with our projects (for instance, I moved our entire battery bank a few meters further uphill), and the damage to the roof has encouraged us to think about building upwards. It's also shown us what we can bounce back from - lost a lot of posessions, and hosing down the house and everything in it was pretty miserable. Oh, and it happened a few days before Christmas!
The cabin is about 30 meters uphill, and about half a kilometer away, on an old agricultural terrace - nightmare doing the groundwork, and getting materials in, but it's so worth it - spring is just beginning here, and I'm sat in the unfinished structure right now, watching birds flit between the treetops at window level, listening to the stream chuckling in its bed - very different to the perennial roar of the weir at the mill.
It's a challenging lifestyle, but I wouldn't trade it for the world.