Noah Count For The Weather

Had some rain today. Either that, or a lot of people in the clouds had thousands of fire hoses aimed at Our Fair City running maximum volume. I should check the river gage tomorrow to see what’s up at the bridge. Right now, it’s barely risen, but what we’re measuring is the water coming down from the Southern Tier of NY State.

The average flow for this time of year is 4,000 cubic feet per second; right now, it’s running 17,000 cubes. Something must have been going on around June 22, because we hit 40,000 cubic feet per second, with a height of eleven feet – pretty good for this time of year. Right now, it’s barely 5.5 feet.

You get a lot of water up around Binghamton, a lot of snow melt all at once, and we can be looking at 30’ coming down the river. The levee on our side goes to 42’, slightly lower on the other bank and I don’t know why; it could be the river takes a sharp curve here and the water tends to pile up on this side.

I’ve seen a couple of high-water events on the river where we were told, basically, “Head for the hills.” Both times there was a fear the dykes would break due to the water pressing on them for an extended length of time. Nothing happened and we were allowed back the next day, safe & sound.

Someone said, “Are you near the Susquehanna?” and I replied, “Our address is River Street; any other questions?”