Tuesday, June 27, 2006

River Rising

The river at Riegelsville gauge continues to surge upwards near 13' with rain forecast for today and ending tomorrow. It appears that the Lehigh Basin received some more heavy rain last night, given the recent mini-spike, but the only station to reach flood stage was the Lehigh River at Walnutport.

Does anybody know why Walnutport is the only Lehigh station to exceed flood stage? Seems odd.

I am still optomistic that the Delaware will not exceed flood stage at 22' in Riegelsville. It all depends on what happens upstream.

I have a number of river trips that are facing extinction if the river does not recede back below 5' before next week. Nine days on the river with Girl Scouts from Hunterdon County.

Tomorrow I was planning to join Fred Stine and Faith Zerbe of Delaware Riverkeeper Network to take the Riverkeeper boat from Bristol, PA to Penns Landing in Philly. I haven't had many opportunities to do any boating in the tidal Delaware, but current conditions could scuttle this trip.

An alternative for tomorrow is to accompany a reporter from the Hunterdon Democrat on a canoe trip from Frenchtown to Bulls Island, but that seems even more unlikely.

I will lilely do an update later today.


-- "Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company." Mark Twain

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

The Walnutport Station on the Lehigh River seems odd, to be the only one on the Lehigh to exceed flood stage.

Maybe the was the center of the storm cell!

Anonymous said...

A walk down to the river above Belvidere this morning and another check of stream gauges shows the Delaware level to have risen here about 7+ feet total so far (up to about 12.11' now). That will likely go higher looking at the chart and stream guages norh of here, and is dependant on any rain that might still fall in the upper basin. Today the water is a chocolate color; a change from yesterday. Official flood stage is 22' here, although some nearby areas flood at lower river levels.

Local stream conditions and guages indicate our area did not get the rainfall that areas south and north received so far. Tohickon was up on Sunday and again Monday. Brodhead was up Monday and still this morning. Pequest and other local streams have only had moderate increases.

With a flood level of only 8 feet at Walnutport, that area might be lower than other guage areas???

H

Anonymous said...

Here's a question/observation about current levels:

Walnutport guage reports 23,300 cfs @ 9:00 am.
Bethlehem " " 20,600 cfs @ 9:00 am.
Glendon " " 21, 700 cfs @ 9:15 am.

Could the lower cfs downstream from Walnutport be due to dam surge and bubble lag?

Likewise on the Delaware:
Belvidere guage reports 52,200 cfs @ 8:30 am.
Trenton " " 45,700 cfs @ 9:15 am.
(Lehigh is adding at least 21,000 cfs, plus other tribs)

Could this be a natural rippling effect of a rising bubble as it progresses downstream? a result of scattered storm paterns over a period of the last few days?

H

riverhealer said...

I don't have an answer for that, but wouldn't it be an intersting topic for a program speaker? (someone who really knows about that sort of thing)