Small Spikes

Certain areas, mostly in the Poconos, received significant rain last night, enough to send a few streams up a foot. Most streams didn't register any significant change, so the storms were spotty. Pocono Creek, Brodhead Creek and the Lehigh River all came up. On the NJ side the Musconetcong River at the Bloomsbury gauge rose a foot to 2.34' (a perfect level for paddling).

The aforementioned surges in streamflow created a blip at the Belvidere gauge, and the gauge at Riegelsville showed a more substantial spike of nearly a foot and now stands at 7.63'.

This week is expected to bring scattered but heavy thunderstorms, and these will probably impact the mountainous upper watershed more than the lower Delaware. No flood watches are in effect, but there may be some small streams coming up quickly since we haven't exactly dried out yet.

Last night I was reviewing the data on record floods for several of the Delaware River stations and a few key tributaries. It is interesting that record floods for the upper Delaware don't often correspond to those on the lower Delaware. It's easy to determine the root cause of the record floods by observing the time of year. For instance there were a few record floods on the upper Delaware that were clearly icejam related events, and that did not even register as major events for the lower Delaware.

Three out of seven of the top lower Delaware floods were ice and snow melt related, the rest were hurricanes, or in the case of June '06, a tropical depression. To receive an emailed copy of the record flood PDF file, plus a bonus 9-page flood bibliography just contact me and I will send it out. Or you can wait until I figure out how to post these documents on this site, but don't hold your breath.