Friday Vermont Hurricane Irene Update

I've been watching Hurricane Irene closely, as have many people in the New England area.  There is, as always, a lot of uncertainty in the track of the storm.  There was some good news today in that the storm is not as strong as it could have been.  However, I'm worried about the possible impacts of the rain on Vermont, though.  In that same Jeff Masters post I noticed one total rainfall forecast:



So, that particular map seems to indicate that there could be 7 inches of rain in most of the Vermont side of the Champlain Valley, and at least as much in the southern Green Mountains.  Most of that would be Sunday afternoon through Monday morning.  The NWS is calling for 3 to 5 inches of rain in the Champlain Valley and up to 7 inches in the mountains.  This is less than the scenario above, but still enough to cause flooding.  My guess is we will see some roads washed out and flooding in some areas near rivers.

One important thing to note about that map, though, is just how narrow that predicted area of heavy rain is.  There's a good chance any one spot will miss out.  I don't want to wish that 7 inches of rain on New Hampshire or the Adirondacks, but I really hope it doesn't hit Vermont.  I love big storms... but this is excessive.

(One interesting thought I just had was that if winter storms this intense formed in Vermont, this would be 6 or 7 FEET of snow out of one storm.  Luckily, winter storms generally don't hold as much moisture and energy as hurricanes)

At this point it appears that the 'best case' scenario of the storm being pushed out to see is very, very unlikely.

I don't want to cause people to panic, and as long as you live on high ground, you will be quite safe.  Just stay away from the rivers for a while, and most importantly, DO NOT DRIVE INTO FLOODWATERS.  Sometimes it looks like the water flowing over a bridge is just a few inches deep... but in reality, the bridge is 100 yards downstream rather than still attached to the road.

Quick Vermont Hurricane Irene Update

There's a lot of info on Hurricane Irene already out there but I thought a quick update on its effects on Vermont was appropriate.

There was a great update by Matt Suskoski on the Weather Rapport blog.  This blog, at blogs.burlingtonfreepress.com/weather/, is a good place to get updates, as is the official NWS site at http://www.erh.noaa.gov/btv/ .

The storm has shifted west and slowed down a bit.  This is a bit of good news for me personally, because I'm planning a trip to Western Massachusetts on Friday and it looks like by leaving early Sunday morning we'll avoid most of the storm.  The bad news is it will follow us back to Vermont.  And, since it is moving slower than expected, it may also stay in Vermont longer than expected.  Right now, some computer models predict that the Irene will pass over Vermont still at tropical storm strength... and very wet.  Most areas of Vermont would get at least  5 inches of rain if this model were correct!  Of course, hurricanes are very hard to forecast, and it could still miss the state entirely.  It's worth noting though that Otter Creek in Middlebury was noticeably higher than its normal summer level today, and that heavy rain may happen today with thunderstorms not associated with the hurricane... so the worst case scenario is a pretty nasty one that could leave us with significantly worse flooding than this year's nasty spring thaw or May thunderstorms.



Above: A model prediction of 4 to 8 inches of rain in Vermont from Irene.  These models sometimes miss the local effects of mountains so it's not impossible that areas of the Green Mountains would get over 10 inches of rain if this model were correct.  Yikes!

We're far from the river and in a very solid old building so I doubt we'll have flooding in our home, but there's a good chance that many bridges will be washed out, roads will be covered in mud, power will be out, and no one will be going anywhere for a few days.  Luckily we've got a lot of food stored here.  You should too.  Make sure you have plenty of food, water, batteries, and other emergency supplies available, because you may need them!  I'll try to post updates but for emergency info, you are better off checking the National Weather Service site above and listening to your local authorities.  If you are in an area that flooded already this year (except lake flooding) or has flooded in the past you may consider staying at a friend's house Sunday night.

Update Thursday afternoon: Still definitely looks like Irene could have a big impact on Vermont.  One recent computer model I looked held the brunt of the storm back until late Sunday night or Monday morning.  There's also the chance it will miss us completely.  We'll see!

Historic Channels of Negley Run, Site of Pittsburgh's Recent Flash Flood

After writing earlier this week about Negley Run's flash flood on Washington Street in Pittsburgh, I became curious about the historic watershed.  Since I hadn't heard anything about it before, I figured it would be a small one, so I started mapping the historic channels, based on topography and this map from the Darlington Digital Collection.  Turns out it is a huge watershed - comparable to the Junction Hollow watershed in many ways.  In fact, it once included a lake called Silver Lake that appears to have been similar to Panther Hollow Lake.  Unlike Junction Hollow, however, this watershed does not have any intact streams present except very small ones in Highland Park and perhaps in other very steep areas.

Negley Run is the northern of these two watersheds, and Junction Hollow the southern.  Note that the colors mean different things for each map (oops).  For Negley Run, the dark blue lines are creeks that appeared on historic maps while the light blue lines are areas that probably had flow based on topography.  The yellow/orange channels around Penn Hills appear to have drained into Negley Run but the water that falls in that area is now routed into the Nine Mile Run 'sewershed'.  So, in a way, Negley Run is even 'beheaded' like Panther Hollow run is, although there is no aboveground stream to offer evidence of this.

Anyway, here's the Google Map:

View Negley Run Historic Channels in a larger map

Notice just how much area of dense urbanization drains down towards Washington Avenue.  Imagine two inches of rain in an hour, over that whole area, being forced into old sewage pipes that were possibly build before all that development was in place.  All of that sewage water was pouring towards the river, but the system got overwhelmed, or clogged, with horrible tragic results.

Negley Run doesn't have a visible creek, and to my knowledge doesn't have a watershed advocacy organization.  It's still important to the people of Pittsburgh though, if for no other reason than the fact that in its current state it is dangerous.  For that reason, the watershed health of Negley Run is every bit as important as that of Junction Hollow and Nine Mile runs.

On a side note, Junction Hollow was impacted by this flood as well.  Check out these pictures, taken by Martha Riecks, of Panther Hollow Lake after the deluge.

I wonder if the water got high enough in the lake to overtop into the historic Four Mile Run channel beyond...

Technology Side Project: Creating an Invasive Species Computer Game

Lately I've been working on a little side project, which involves figuring out how to make computer games with the game software GameMaker.  The game I've come up with (which is in its early stages!) is called Buckthorn Bash.

Flash Flood Tragedy in Pittsburgh - Let's Keep it from Happening Again

Pittsburgh was faced with a tragedy last week when extreme downpours caused a flash flood that killed four people.

A torrential thunderstorm dumped two inches of rain in an hour, on top of already saturated ground.  This caused a massive sewage-stormwater overflow that suddenly swamped Washington Boulevard, leading to the tragedy that claimed these four lives, including two small children.

I found this article about lessons learned from the flood.  The point that life is precious and tenuous is a well-made point.  But why not look beyond that?  Why not look at the causes of this disaster and try to keep it from happening again?  Warning systems and closures are on the right track, but may not be enough.

A quick glance at Google Earth shows why Washington Street is prone to flooding:



It's in a hollow, just like Panther Hollow, Junction Hollow, and the many other hollows of Pittsburgh.  It's been a hollow since before the city was built.  And, under the earth and concrete, in a sewer line, is the buried, modified path of what was once called Negley's Run.



(The above image comes from an 1850 map available online from the Darlington Digital Library, an amazing resource.)

When a waterway is put underground, it is out of sight and often out of mind, but it doesn't stop being a waterway.  Negley's run has a rather large watershed, one that still captures massive amounts of water during summer downpours.  In fact, runoff is faster now than it was before the city was built.  Impervious substrates rush water into the drains, where it is funneled through pipes.  Furthermore, without being able to easily see what is happening in the pipes, it is difficult to know if there are blockages in the flow, or to see water quickly rising.

Sewage-stormwater overflows happen often in Pittsburgh, but usually 'only' dump sewage into the rivers.  During my project I did learn that overflows like this one do sometimes happen in the Junction Hollow neighborhood, where they fill the basements of unfortunate residents with sewer water.  Overflows happen into Nine Mile Run at Frick Park as well.

I don't know if rain gardens, impervious substrates, additional trees, rain barrels, and daylighted streams could have stopped this flood.  I do know that these measures have been proven to SLOW the movement of floodwaters (after all, that is what inspired the title of this blog).  Water rose FAST during this flood - acting more like a flash flood in the Desert Southwest than a flood typical of Pennsylvania.  If we could have slowed this flood down just a few minutes, it might have been enough to prevent these tragic deaths.

Watershed health isn't 'just' an environmental issue.  Floods kill people each year, and ruin the homes and businesses of many more.  As weather appears to be becoming more extreme, perhaps due to climate change, and as we degrade watersheds more and more, tragedies like this are going to become more and more common if we don't act to offset the damage.  No single person's sewer-connected drainspout can be blamed for this tragedy, but if each drainspout in the watershed was disconnected, maybe these deaths could have been avoided.

Flooding and Hail along the Middlebury River

Just a couple of weeks ago I had a blog post about how dry Vermont was.  It's amazing how quickly things change.

The dry conditions continued for a while after I made that post, but last week it started raining.   The rain started with an overnight drenching on the night of the 9th, amounting to an inch of rain around the Middlebury River watershed.  On the 11th much of Vermont was relatively dry, with only a few scattered thunderstorms.  However, a slow-moving severe storm formed near Middlebury and moved right up the Middlebury River, through East Middlebury and Ripton.  The storm dumped an additional 2 to 3 inches of rain in the watershed, in about an hour!

In two days, the river went from looking like this:



To looking like this:



Water levels rose very close to the level we experienced during the heavy spring flood last May.  And that's not all...

Rainwater Pots in Thailand

I recently came across some photos of huge pots that are used in Thailand to collect rainwater from rooftops for use.  These pictures were posted by John Hawker of Sat-Ed, a group that works to bring Internet access, and thus access to global information and education, to rural areas of Southeast Asia.

Vermont Summer Dry Spell

It's hard to believe after the soakings of this spring, but Vermont is in the midst of a summer dry spell.

This isn't an extreme drought of the sort that Texas is experiencing.  It's quite normal for Vermont to have several weeks of mostly dry weather in midsummer.  As is often the case, there have been at least a few thunderstorms in Vermont each afternoon, but they have been small and fast-moving.

This dry spell isn't phasing the lush green growth in meadows and the forest understory that grew after this spring's rain.  It is having an effect on the Middlebury River, though.  With a steep, relatively small watershed, the Middlebury River is very sensitive to weather events in the short term.  In fact, it reminds me a bit of the washes and canyons in southern California, with one key difference:  even during dry periods, the Middlebury River is always flowing.  Most rivers and streams in southern California are dry this time of year, especially in areas with wide, cobbly or sandy riverbeds, like the part of the Middlebury River I most frequently visit.

Here's one part of the river, as it looked about a half hour ago:



Here is how that same area looked during the May floods:



The view isn't from the exact same place, but note the leaning sycamore in both pictures.  Note that this is also not the entire flow of the river, as this area has more than one river channel (typical of rivers that are full of cobbles and have a medium gradient).  Even still, it really shows how the water level has changed.

The picture also demonstrates how amazingly fast cottonwoods and sycamores grow.  Those large saplings to the left are the same trees as the little seedlings in the first picture!  When the land you are growing on washes away in floods every few years, you have to mature and set seed fast!

More pictures below:

Summer Update: Pittsburgh, Vermont, Southern California.

I haven't been back to Panther Hollow in Pittsburgh since winter, but the habitat restoration work in Schenley Park and the Junction Hollow Watershed are really taking off.  Yesterday the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy blog had a post by Krissy Hopkins, who is doing research on restoration in Panther Hollow.  The post really brought me back to last year when I spent many hot, muggy days exploring the hollow and the larger Junction Hollow watershed that Panther Hollow is a part of.  I wonder how much has changed in the last six months, and how the rain gardens I helped install in East Liberty are doing.

Meanwhile, in Vermont, the weather has done a 180 degree turn from what it was doing this spring.  (No, it has not reached 180 degrees, though it felt like it for one week.)  Instead of flooding, the weather has actually been rather dry.  As that article points out, the summer rain has been very spotty and localized this year (as it often is).  As it happens, the Middlebury area has been wetter than most areas, as we've been 'lucky' with the thunderstorms and rain.  In fact, yesterday's rain seemed to target southern Addison County specifically!  Nevertheless, it has been dry as a whole, and the rivers are low.  Nothing like what they are seeing in Texas, and I suspect by the time fall comes around it will be wet again.  Still, it is interesting how quickly conditions can change.

The forecast in Vermont is much the same for the next week:  warm and mostly dry, but with a few scattered thunderstorms each afternoon.


Above: a storm approaches the Middlebury Airport.  The Middlebury area has been wetter than much of Vermont lately, probably just due to chance.

Southern California is expecting an easterly wave from the Southwest Monsoon today.  As is often the case, thunderstorms are likely in the San Gabriel and San Bernardino Mountains.  With this wave, however, there is also a chance that some of these thunderstorms will move out of the mountains towards the coast, bringing some rain and lightning to areas like Los Angeles or Ventura.  Summer thunderstorms in these areas are quite rare - some years one or two storms make it to the coast in late July or August, but in many years there is no summer rain at all.  If it does rain, enjoy the brief break from the dry season.

Clean Water Should Not Be a Partisan Issue (just one political post)

I have my own political opinions, and enjoy a good debate as much as anyone.  Yet, I've tried to keep politics out of this blog.  Politics in the United States are more and more divisive by the day, and yet clean water and livable conditions are important to anyone and really are not a partisan issue.

Or, at least, they shouldn't be.  I came across this story on the NPR website today about a Republican mayor in a conservative state who has worked to daylight a stream, creating an open space that has coincided with an economic boom in aptly-named Greenville, South Carolina.

I'll admit that I tend liberal on most issues, but I think it is important to give credit where credit is due.  Conservatives, in particular conservative hunters and fishermen and people in rural areas, have been a tremendous part of the conservation movement, and in fact were the people who got the movement started.  The people I know who consider themselves conservative care about water and open space just as much as I do.  In fact, conservation is at its root a 'conservative' value.  These days, though, it is usually perceived as a 'liberal' value.  Really, it should be both.  We all drink the same water, and no one wants poop, carcinogens, or heavy metals in their drinking water.  Everyone likes a cool, clean river or lake to swim in or dip their feet in, without fear of getting sick.  No one wants to live in squalor or misery.

So why are some Republican representatives trying to gut legislation that protects us from filthy water?  The root of the issue seems to be that many believe that federal regulation is ineffective or corrupt, and that state, local, or private forces (corporations???) should keep our water clean instead.  Certainly this is worth talking about, but talking about this isn't what is happening.  If you are fighting a fire and your hose has holes in it, you don't turn off the hose and walk it away.  You fix the hose, or you throw it away and hook up a new one.  I urge any conservative readers of this blog to ask their representatives to propose SOLUTIONS to replace federal legislation, if they feel that the federal legislation doesn't work, rather than getting rid of the laws without a replacement.  It is unacceptable for politicians to be sneaking legislation into an important economic bill, without dialog about these issues.  During my time in Pittsburgh I learned about when the Monongahela River was steaming over 100 degrees in winter and full of every pollutant imaginable.  I find it hard to believe anyone wants to go back to that.  If we get rid of our current laws without setting something else up instead, we can expect to find that our rivers are lighting on fire again.

It has been said that the environmental movement has become lost, that the biggest environmental mistake of the last 30 years was removing humans from the equation.  Perhaps we did spend too much effort on creating 'wilderness' areas 'free of human impact', rather than creating sustainable working landscapes and fostering a reconnection between people and the other elements of ecosystems.  I think it was a necessary and reasonable reaction to the 19th and 20th centuries, but the old environmental movement may need a major overhaul.  I also think it is time for something new.  The new conservation movement needs to be non-partisan, needs to be realistic, and needs to be based on the things that are important to everyone, regardless of our other beliefs.

Thankfully, I am not the only one who feels this way.  There are a lot of people trying to find good solutions as we speak.  As we face possible and ongoing economic and ecological collapses on a variety of scales, we can't afford to squabble any more. We need to get things done.  At our root, our species is defined by our use (and perhaps overuse) of tools.  Our tools got us into this mess, and now is no time to throw them away.  We need to use every tool we have at our disposal, from smartphones, satellites, and space research to our oldest, deepest spiritual and religious beliefs... and most important of all, our brains.

Hopefully, by my next post I'll be done talking about politics on this blog and will be back to talking about weather or the river.  And, hopefully by then, we'll have a few more solutions and ideas to work with.  Maybe you have one of them!  Feel free to post your thoughts here - all civil comments are welcome.

Summer 2011 Sketchbook, Part 1

Most of these are not water-related but I thought it would still be fun to post them.  Sorry about the ugly photos, I don't have access to a scanner anymore.









More here.

Vermont Summer Storms and Fickle Mountain Streams

The mountain streams and small rivers of Vermont are one of the state's treasures.  These streams, which hold copious water all year, are a huge draw to people looking to fish, swim, wade, dive, and explore.  These activities are an important part of the summer in Vermont and other areas with mountain streams, and by all means people should be enjoying these places.  However, they need to do so with respect for the fact that these waterways change fast, and can be quite dangerous at times.

This month a tragedy struck at the Bolton Potholes when a 12 year old boy drowned.  Another tragedy was narrowly averted when two people were rescued from Huntington Gorge.  There are many factors that can lead to danger, including dangerous cliff diving, drunken exploits into dangerous waters, or just bad luck.  One of the strongest factors, it seems, and one that is also often not well understood, is just how quickly these rivers and streams change during and after summer storms.

iNaturalist - more tech-based citizen science

In my search for fun, useful citizen science projects that involve smartphones and location data, I somehow managed to miss iNaturalist until now.  It's too bad, because this project seems to work a lot better than other ones I've tried out.  Among other things:

• species are organized on a database that is hierarchical based on taxonomy, making it easy to search, make partial identifications, and obtain linked info.
• For some species, range maps are already present, and there are plans to upload more
• You have the option to control your geoprivacy, meaning you can upload location data that only you and the site admins can see.
• Projects are versatile and seem easy to set up (I haven't tried yet, though).
• The iPhone app and website are easy to use and not buggy.
• There are a lot of neat people on the website who will help ID organisms.  In some cases, I've had IDs entered within minutes of an upload
• It is easy to save observations on the phone and upload them when you are in a WiFi area.
• It's fun!

So far, it doesn't appear that there is an easy way to track abiotic features of the natural world, such as weather events, urban hydrology, or geologic features.  That may, in fact, be too off-topic for the website, but I hope someone creates one for those things someday.

If you're interested, try it out!  You can see/follow my profile and sightings here.

July 6 Severe Thunderstorms near Burlington, Vermont

On July 6, another line of severe thunderstorms passed through Vermont, causing wind damage in many areas.  I had the opportunity to get a very good view of these storms, because we ended up driving through the line in Charlotte, Vermont.

Slow Water in the Garden

One of the neat things about water is how it is scalable - how water flowing over a small area acts similar to how it would at a much larger scale.  I've been experiencing this in our garden this summer.