Vermont Looks Back on Irene a Year Later

Last weekend we traveled to southern Vermont to attend a good friend's wedding.  Through our travels we came across meandering, slow trickles of water within vast, scoured channels.  We were seeing the results of Irene, a year after the fact.

Exactly a year ago today, we were at a different wedding (weddings and hurricanes seem to share peak seasons) and planning to leave early so we could get home before Irene hit Vermont.  Like many people, I'd already been following the storm for several days, and knew it could be bad.  No one really knew just how bad it would be... though a few computer models that most disbelieved ended up predicting the storm fairly accurately several days in advance:



Above, the GFS computer model predicts torrential rains in Vermont, four days in advance.

My friends and anyone else who was reading this blog a year ago will remember that we were evacuated from East Middlebury, where severe flooding took place.  I'd been taking notes about the storm while it happened, but they end abruptly when we were told we had to leave.






Above: flood debris left in the Middlebury River by Irene.

East Middlebury was mostly spared, but other towns were not as lucky.  As everyone now knows, the damage was catastrophic in many places.  Many homes were destroyed and many more were trapped in their rural homes for many days.  Thankfully, Vermont is sparsely populated and people are usually prepared for holing up for a few days, often during blizzards.  The peak of the floods happened during the afternoon on a Sunday, so few were on the roads and people didn't have their homes collapse while they slept.  The death toll was very low.

After the storm, people pulled together.  We went to help out in Brandon, though many people did much more than we did.  Websites, blogs, Google maps, and Twitter were widely used to coordinate repairs and volunteer efforts.  The response was positive and very touching.  Sadly though, a lot of damage to rivers was also done in the days after the storm, as people struggling to repair roads and protect themselves against the fear of future flooding took to the rivers to remove gravel and shore up levees.  It seemed logical to many that removing gravel and straightening rivers might prevent future floods, but in reality, it can cause a lot of damage and make future flooding worse.  I'm all for smart flood control and engineering that saves lives and homes, but in my view and that of many others, many of these projects did long-term damage to the rivers and also made them less safe in the future.  Even yesterday, a year after Irene, in many areas the aftermath of these projects was still visible.


Above: a pile of rock left in the Middlebury River after attempts at gravel removal and river channelization were halted.  The issue was very contentious in East Middlebury, with many people believing that these efforts, while very damaging to the river, made people safer.  I still strongly disagree a year later.

Over the last year, the rivers have been adjusting to Irene's aftermath and the modifications people made to the rivers after the storm.  It's been a dry year since then, and it has seemed like after Irene's passage the extreme weather of the previous year turned off, like a switch had been flipped.  The fall was uneventful for the most part, the winter mild and boring (and a failure for snow), and the spring only notable for an extreme warm spell.  This summer has been a warm and dry one, punctuated by a few severe thunderstorms that brought more wind and lightning than flooding.  As summer winds down, there are no big storms immediately evident in the future.  This year's 'I storm' could cause quite a few problems on the Gulf Coast, but if it brings anything to Vermont, it will probably just be needed rain.

Vermont has bounced back.  Just as the forests regrew after their deforestation in the late 1800s, Vermont has culturally and economically and emotionally rebounded from Irene.  We're not fully healed, but we've made good progress. Hopefully nature spares us any hurricanes this year, and the rebounding process can continue.

If anyone is interested in the history of hurricanes impacting New England, and doesn't mind some meteorological jargon, they should check out this scientific document, which my friend called to my attention this weekend.  Irene was a nasty storm, and hopefully one we won't see the likes of for the next century, but in all likelihood other hurricanes will affect Vermont in the following decades.  We would be wise to prepare for them in both the sort term and the long term.

Good News from Junction Hollow

Last year around this time, while Vermont enjoyed the warm later summer days that came before Irene, Pittsburgh was slammed with flash floods.  Negley Run was inundated in stormwater-sewage overflow, causing the tragic loss of four lives, and the small neighborhood of Junction Hollow was flooded with raw sewage, for the fourth time in the last ten years.  I posted the post above as part of an effort to bring attention to the problem, which could only be solved through entire-watershed effort.

Around a year has passed since those most recent floods, and this summer has brought good news.  The problem isn't solved yet, but progress is being made and things are improving in Junction Hollow.


Above:  Rain garden in Junction Hollow, photo by Laura Shaffalo

Laura Shaffalo recently sent me these pictures of Junction Hollow.  They show work being done to improve drainage and reduce the chance of sewage overflow in the neighborhood.  In conjunction with work being done higher in the watershed, including restoration of the Panther Hollow watershed that drains into Junction Hollow, this work should help to reduce the risk of sewage floods in Junction Hollow and also improve water quality downstream in the Ohio and Monongahela rivers.

Rocky swales have been created to slow down and infiltrate water running off of the bridge above:







One of the drainpipes from the bridge is bringing in garbage and rapid runoff, but at least it is slowing down here and presumably another swale will be added here:



This drainpipe was repaired:



This is quite an improvement from when the drainpipe was mixing with raw sewage and added to the floodwaters that were surging near a playground, as seen in this video I posted in last year's post.

Laura also sent a picture of pervious sidewalk that was installed around the Union Hall of Engineers:



Efforts like these are great news and are especially important in light of the fact that more conventional 'grey water' solutions are extremely expensive and often unaffordable.

I haven't been to Pittsburgh for a while, so I haven't seen the progress being made in other parts of town.  If you have any photos or updates, please post them here or send them to naturalist.charlie at gmail dot com and I will post them.


And, on a final note, while googling recent Pittsburgh water news I found this story.  Water that soaks into the aquifers doesn't just disappear, but can be used again later!

Enjoy New England's Colorful Seasons and Help with Citizen Science Project

It's been a long, dry summer in most of the United States. Vermont hasn't had as severe a drought as most areas, but rainfall has been below average for much of the summer.  Recent rains have brought much of Vermont back to its normal wetness, but after such an unrelenting summer, I've started to think about fall.

So have the trees, apparently.



Don't get me wrong... most of the trees are as green as ever.  Still, just a few trees... trees in unusually wet or dry environments, or trees that are otherwise stressed by their environment... are starting to show a few vivid colorful leaves.

I've only been through three Vermont autumns, so I often find myself wondering when and how each tree species will respond to the changing weather.  It's been more than just a casual question, lately, because I've been mapping a lot of natural communities at work, and in many cases vivid fall foliage is available in photos!  I see a rainbow of colors across the landscape, but often wonder what exactly I am looking at.


View Larger Map

The red trees above are probably red maples; the yellow ones perhaps black ash.  It's hard to say though (Which ash species again was it that turns purple?  White ash?).

To answer these questions, I started a fun citizen science project on iNaturalist.

iNaturalist is a great place to track the color of leaves, because each observation comes with a photo, a location, and a time. If I get enough people adding to this, we could build up an expansive database of how leaf color varies over the year and from year to year. Not only will that help me make maps of different natural communities, but it will help track how our changing climate affects the life cycle of our trees as well. Besides... everyone loves pictures of fall color, and most people are taking these photos anyway. This will be a fun way to share them with others.

This project is a place to document and share color patterns. I'm most interested in anything you can see in a high-resolution aerial photo - not just overstory trees but wetland and meadow plants as well . For instance, the goldenrods that bloom in late summer can definitely be seen from aerial photos. Even the patterns of sphagnum moss in bogs can sometimes be seen from above.

Remember... location and date are important for this project, so if you aren't sure where or when a photo was taken, it's probably better to leave that one out.

Check back with this post to see updates below!

     

   

 

   

      

     

       

                          View more observations from New England Color on iNaturalist »

                 

     

   

 

Swapping Watersheds, and Looking Back

Last month I swapped watersheds.

For a bit over a year, I'd been living in the Otter Creek watershed, and more specifically in the Middlebury River watershed.  I watched the Middlebury River from the end of one of the snowiest Vermont winters on record, through a very wet spring and summer culminating in Tropical Storm Irene's horrible flooding, and then through fall and into another winter (albeit a somewhat feeble one).  I watched the equally feeble spring snowmelt lead into an early summer of mostly low water, with a notable exception.

Through it all, I was trying very hard to find employment within my field in Addison County.  Ultimately I realized I was going to have to either give up my home by the Middlebury River or my passion for working in the conservation and ecology field.  The latter won out, and along with my girlfriend finding a job in the same area, we relocated to Montpelier, in the Winooski River watershed.


Above: The Winooski River, a ways downstream from Montpelier.

I'd lived near the Winooski before, when I lived in Burlington, and while I technically wasn't living in the watershed, I spent much of my time in the watershed, including my wanders in Centennial Woods and some of my time on the UVM campus (it's hard to say where the watershed line passes through campus, with all the human modifications to the runoff in the area).


Above: A distant severe thunderstorm, and the Winooski River flowing through the town of the same name.

Montpelier is much further upstream than Burlington, and has its own weather and ecology and culture.  It's surrounded by mountains, and picks up different storm tracks.  There seems to be slightly less summer rain and, from what the records indicate, significantly more winter snow.

Transitions can be difficult, especially those we don't really choose.  I'm excited to live in Montpelier, but also was sad to leave Addison County, the Middlebury River, and my friends in the area.  I will still see my Addison County friends often - especially those who are moving to Burlington for the same reason I left - lack of jobs.  But, I won't be watching the changes of the river anymore.

Last weekend I was back in Middlebury to see friends and go to the Midd Summer Festival.  I also got a chance to visit the Middlebury River.  It's been a MUCH drier summer than last year, and the water was very low - much lower than it ever got over the time I lived in East Middlebury.



As always when visiting an old home, most of the residents are still there when you go back . This includes my friends, and also the foxes I've seen many times.  In addition to these fox tracks (They are fox tracks, right? Dogs also frequent this area along with local human residents) I saw a fox, but it was too far away to photograph with an iPhone.  I also saw a large great blue heron, which I kept irritating as I moved downstream.

Note also the saplings.  In the old oxbow cut area, there were hundreds of cottonwood seedlings.  I also found this sycamore seedling.  Life is moving on.



One of the most important and difficult lesson rivers have to teach us is that of the constancy of change, even in my absence.  In the month since I'd last seen the river, water had been steadily flowing downstream the whole time, meandering a slower than usual path due to the dry weather.  Trees were colonizing the areas laid bare by Irene and the recent flash flood, the fox and heron were hunting, other East Middlebury residents were enjoying the swimming and fishing holes, and life generally was moving forward.  This river has existed in one form or another for millions of years, probably even flowing to some extent under the ice during the great ice ages.  No matter what humans do, and how we humans treat each other and the world around us, the river will keep flowing, until it completely erodes away the ancient mountains or until the sun goes nova in billions of years and vaporizes the Earth's water.  We talk about protecting the river, but the river will always be the river.  What we really are protecting is our relationship with it; our ability to enjoy it and use it, not only to provide water, fish, and scenic beauty, but to share its stories and its lessons for anyone who is watching.

I'm excited about my new home, and I've been spending quite a bit of time watching the North Branch of the Winooski River, which flows through the part of Montpelier we now live in.  Still, I'll miss East Middlebury and the Middlebury River.  I'll be back to visit again, but while I'm gone, the river keeps flowing...

Dam Construction Uncovers Winooski Falls

Last week I was walking over the Colchester Avenue bridge between Burlington and Winooski and I noticed the sound of rushing water under the bridge.



I was confused.  The falls upstream gush with water all year...



... but the water under the bridge is usually deep and slow-moving, because of the dam just downstream.

I wondered if dry conditions had exposed some of the rocks in the channel, but it had rained recently, and the river was running a bit higher than it had been previously.  I glanced across the street and noticed a crane on the dam.



The water behind the dam was about 8 feet below its normal level, probably due to the construction or maintenance occurring on the dam.  The lowered water level allowed a glimpse of the riverbed that is usually flooded behind the dam.





In addition to the exposed bedrock, there was a smaller concrete structure that I'd never seen before.



I'd assumed that the mill dam was built on a steep falls, just like the Middlebury waterfall, but in fact, the dam holds back water that would otherwise cascade over a series of rapids.

The area just below the dam is called 'salmon hole', and for good reason - Lake Champlain and the Winooski River support a population of landlocked salmon.


Above: "Salmon Hole" during April snowmelt from April 2011, after a winter of record snowfall in Vermont.

Before the dam was built, the salmon must have been able to work their way up the rapids.  Now that the dam exists, the salmon are blocked in their path to spawn, but there is a cooperative effort to move the salmon beyond the dam and another dam just upstream.  The dam also produces clean hydroelectricity - and unlike other larger dams, it doesn't flood a large area.

It does flood the Winooski Falls Rapids, though, and I appreciated the opportunity to get a feel for what that part of the river was like before the dam was built.

I'm not sure how long the construction will be going on, but if you're in the area, you might as well wander down to the bridge and check it out.  Even if the construction has ended, it's a good excuse to go visit the river.

Click here for some historic photos of this dam and other dams on the Winooski.

Neat Demonstration-Based Water Exhibits in the Twin Cities

During our recent trip to the Twin Cities of Minnesota, we saw some very neat water exhibits at local museums.  The Twin Cities lie on the Mississippi River, and the cities are very much celebrating the cultural and natural history of their river.

The Mill City Museum in Minneapolis sits on the site of what was once the world's largest flour mill.

This mill used the power of the Mississippi River to turn vast machinery and process the copious grain crop of the Midwest.  I talked a bit about these mills in this post.  One of my favorite things about this museum was its very neat interactive water exhibits.  They were probably designed with children in mind, but of course I immediately started playing with them as well.

This exhibit allowed visitors to float 'logs' down the river into 'lumber mills' - a small model of the larger mills that were used to process huge logs floated down the river in times past:



This exhibit demonstrated how the dam in the river and associated tunnels and spillways were used to bring water power to areas along the river:



This river was a small model of the historic buildings and bridges along the river:



Of course, I tried using the bridge to dam up the river, and tossed the houses into the river to wash over the falls.  Not something we'd want to see in real life but fun to do with little models.

My only complaint was lack of sand for the river to flow through, but that would have made a big mess indoors.

This exhibit demonstrated how vertical water turbines work:



Visitors can plug the tube with their hands and feel just how much power and weight is behind even this small amount of water.  It's not hard to imagine how the mighty Mississippi, so many times larger, could power a whole city of mills.

I also tried the 'make a cereal box' exhibit:



There is also a fun elevator tour of the mill with reenactments of what it was like to work here 100 years ago.  Pictures weren't allowed on the tour, but it ended at the top of the mill where there was a good view of some of the ruins:




Nearby in Minneapolis we found a neat fountain and some fun manhole art:





On the way out of town we visited Saint Paul, the twin to Minneapolis.  The Science Museum of Minnesota has a very neat area of outdoor exhibits called the Big Backyard.  Sadly, I didn't have time to go in and check it out, but I got a chance to see some of the VERY neat exhibits.

I was excited to see that there is a 9 hole Mini-Golf course that demonstrates many characteristics of rivers and watersheds.  It looked like a very fun exhibit, and a great way of demonstrating river science.






There was also a maze through native prairie plants...





... and my favorite type of water exhibit - a large outdoor 'stream table' where water flowed down a sandy slope:



Much of what I learned about rivers was through playing in water moving through sand and mud (though often we had to haul the water with buckets!)  This is the best way for kids to learn about how water moves through a landscape, and admittedly I myself could have spent hours watching the water erode different patterns through the sand.  After all, water is scalable, and patterns seen on a small scale are extremely similar to the patterns larger waterways make.  Alas, we wanted to drive beyond Chicago before we stopped for the night, to avoid Chicago morning traffic, so I didn't get to go in and play in the sand this time.  If I'm back out there again during the warm season, I'll sure check this part of the museum out in more detail!

July 2012: Vermont Heat and Severe Summer Storms

One of the things I like about Vermont is that every season is different.  It's not just that the seasons change quickly, but also that each summer, winter, autumn, and spring is different from those before and after them.

This summer, Vermont's weather has been defined by the intense heat and drought to our south and west.  When the excessively hot weather pattern moves over us, we experience miserable heat (few people here have air conditioning, because it doesn't usually get very hot!).  When the cooler air inevitably fights its way back into Vermont, it butts up against the very hot and humid air, creating violent thunderstorms.  This pattern has recurred several times this summer so far.  We experience beautiful, sunny days and chilly (mid 40s!) nights like today, but heat and humidity steadily increase each day until Vermont feels like an oven, or like Atlanta in the summer (which is hotter?).  Then, we experience violent storms and the next day the cool weather returns.

It's been drier than usual, and this compounding with the heat has lead to somewhat droughty conditions.  The rivers are running low.


Above: the Winooski River near downtown Winooski


Above: water trickles over an old mill dam at the North Fork of the Winooski, well upstream in Montpelier.

This is the lowest I've seen these rivers.  I haven't been to the Middlebury River since we moved away... but I'm guessing it also got pretty low in some of the warm periods.

Vermont needs the rain, but our dry conditions are nothing compared to the drought gripping most of the country.  On the edge of the hot air mass, we have picked up enough storms to keep most of Vermont out of severe drought, but these storms have been spotty, and some areas have been quite dry.


Above: Drought map from the NOAA Climate Prediction Center.  The summer monsoon has brought some relief to the Southwest, but the drought seems to be spreadingnorth and east.  Will it make it to Vermont?  I hope not!

Last Tuesday was Vermont's most recent bout of severe thunderstorms.  They moved into Montpelier late in the afternoon, and the mix of the severe storms (which are often weird colors to begin with due to hail within the clouds and other factors) and the backlight of the evening sun led to some dramatic skies.





As the storms moved in, the air was incredibly hot and muggy - over 90 degrees, with humidity well over 50 percent.  The freakish heat and odd humidity reminded me of a fever - sticky, sickly, and fundamentally out of balance.  That sort of heat and energy, when combined with abutting cold air, can lead to incredibly violent weather.

Many areas experienced wind and hail, and perhaps some flooding.  Montpelier escaped these, but was surrounded by extremely intense lightning.  It was frequent enough that I was able to get some videos using my iPhone and 'movie' screen captures.





After the sun set, another wave of storms moved through.  This time, the lightning was behind the rain, resulting in a sheet lightning effect.  Most of the storms moved just to the south, right up the north facing slopes above the Winooski Valley.  The lightning was incredible.  At times, there were flashes every four to six seconds, rhythmically, pulsing twice like a heartbeat.  I have no idea what made the lightning so periodic, because usually lightning seems more chaotic in timing.  It was incredibly surreal.


Above: sheet lightning lights up the sky.

The storms have followed similar tracks with each summer wave, and the heavier rain (if not the lightning) has generally been missing Montpelier.


Above: estimated precipitation totals from the RadarScope app.

This image mirrors what other storms have done this summer as well.  Most move south of town, with a few moving north of town.  Our location has been rather dry.  For whatever reason, the storms seem to be favoring Burlington, which they historically tended to avoid. Despite that observation, climate records show that Burlington on average gets about two thirds of an inch more rain each July than Montpelier, even though June and August are equally wet in both places.  Montpelier, in return, averages a bit more winter precipitation, and a bit colder temperatures, which means about a foot and a half more snow.  Perhaps more importantly, thaws with south winds can't work their way into Montpelier as readily as Burlington, meaning the snow stays on the ground longer too.

So, despite the dry times right now, we'll have more snow to play in come winter.

Meanwhile, I hope we avoid any ill effects from the severe storms we may get through the rest of the summer. After Irene and other weather disasters hit the state last year, we need a break!


Best of luck to those dealing with more serious heat and drought to our south and west...

Minneapolis: A River City

The main event of our recent road trip was a visit to Minneapolis, a beautiful city that, like Pittsburgh, is rediscovering its river(s).  Minneapolis lies along the only significant falls of the Mississippi River.  This put the city in an ideal position: abundant water power for its mills, but the ability to ship freight all the way down the river to the Gulf of Mexico and beyond.  When water was the main power source, the breadbasket of the continent brought its grain to Minneapolis to make flour.



This mill didn't just crumble with age - it suffered a cataclysmic fire started by a homeless person trying to keep warm about 20 years ago.  The mills had long since been abandoned, as electricity and diesel motors allowed grain to be processed anywhere.  The city turned its back on the mills, and on the river.  The mills crumbled...



The dam built on the falls still stands, however.  After heavy rains to the north, the river was raging.



The water once used to turn mill machinery continues to pour over the dam, and while the mills are mostly gone, the city has built a small historic park around the mill ruins.  The interplay between the river and the people who live near and use it is very poignantly visible here.









Just in a few decades, the river and its associated life are reclaiming the mills.  We watched a muskrat forage amongst the old mill channels and tunnels that probably resemble the limestone caverns that were here before the Europeans set foot on the continent...



The swallows nest in the stones of the old bridges, perhaps cut from the gorge walls where they used to nest.



Encouragingly, rather than trying to shoo away the new residents, the people of Minneapolis have welcomed them with open arms.







Seen below, people are using this constructed creek to study riparian ecology.  Water is fed in from above the dam, and 'floods' and 'droughts' can be created by the researchers.  Just like making a little river in the sand, but on a larger scale.  I wanted to climb down there and check it out, but it was fenced in and I didn't see any news of tours or anything like that...



Some of the mill machinery has been repurposed to make hydroelectric power, and there is talk of expanding this in the future.  In the mean time, the water continues to roll over the dam, heading down to the Gulf of Mexico as it has done over the millenia in the past.





I visited two very neat museums in Minneapolis-Saint Paul which i will post about in a future post.