Spring Thaw

After two weeks of paternity leave, I was back in the office yesterday for a full day of work.  On my drive up to northern Delaware County, I was pretty surprised by all the "road closed" signs.  I knew that north central Ohio had received quite a bit of rain the past few weeks, but I was not prepared to detour my usual route to work because of flooding.

That assumption was pretty foolish- Our office sits on land surrounding a federally owned reservoir.  And in the spring, the reservoir fills with water after big rains and releases it over time.  Still, I wasn't prepared for just how high the reservoir had risen.

Whetstone Creek, December 14, 2010

Here is a snapshot I captured during my lunch break back in December of Whetstone Creek, which runs into the Delaware Reservoir.  During winter, the reservoir is low, and the stream runs here as if there was no reservoir.

Upon hearing how high the water was, I walked back to this same vantage point yesterday, and wow, was I blown away by just how high the water had risen in the reservoir.

Whetstone Creek, March 14, 2011

What once was a quiet, flowing creek in December had become a massive river.

Here is my December photo with a line that represents the approximate high water mark of this season's flooding.

I hope you stayed dry this Spring.  Obviously, our situation here in Ohio pales to the absolute devastation that the people of N.E. Japan have experienced. Perhaps the most jaw-dropping depiction (at least from the point of view from a guy that spends a ton of time looking at aerial photographs) is presented by The New York Times.

Tom

Floods Come to Ohio

What an intense weather week! Snowstorms in Wisconsin, flooding here in Ohio, and horrendous tornadoes in the southeast. The Olentangy River, about a quarter mile from my front door, rose several feet, but did not overflow its banks. The same thing can not be said about the Blanchard River near Findlay, Ohio, which has flooded for the second time in less than a year.

Last night, I walked down to the Olentangy to see what the floods had brought, and I must say, I wasn't ready for this. I really thought an old fishing lure had washed up on shore.



It had not. This was a real fish, a recently alive gizzard shad (Dorosoma cepedianum). It had been washed onto the shore by high water. This shad is not an adult, it was only about two inches long.

As I walked along my usual path, I was beginning to realize that he whole river bank was a mess. Logs, trash, and debris were everywhere. So were more gizzard shad. I noticed a flicker and ripple in several mud puddles. The ripples also turned out to be gizzard shad.

This time, they were alive. I corralled a few fish with by boot clad feet and gently directed them towards the edge of the puddle. I reached down into the finger numbing water and lifted a few of the slimy planktivores back into the river.



I walked further up stream and this sycamore caught my eye. I remember this tree, but don't remember its octopus root system being this far exposed. Sure enough, another dead gizzard shad was laying on top of one of these roots, as if some one had placed it there. Can you see it? I believe it is too small to pick out in this photo, but you could see how the water was rushing around this tree probably only a few hours ago.



I'm anxiously awaiting the sun's return here in Columbus. These pictures are just so gray and brown. They are not pleasant. I did see sunlight and blue sky thirty minutes before I took these pictures. But the clouds quickly came back, casting a very flat and dark light on the muddy riverbank.



I continue to watch for spring. And I feel that we are "over the hump" of the abdominal snow monster that is winter. Nina from Nature Remains reported that she heard a spring peeper this week. Today, we had two pairs of Canada Geese show up on our complex at work for the first time looking for nest sites. And one of the earliest flowers to bloom along the Olentangy River, a nasty invasive called lesser celandine, has already popped and leafed out. It is not phased by the floodwaters, and this plant did lend a bit of green on this dark, muddy day.



Megan and I live in the city. After the water passes our house, the riverine habitat becomes increasingly poor. The trees have been cut away, dams have been built, and by the time the Olentany reaches the Scioto, it is little more than a pond. But here, there are still inconspicuous but important remnants of wild that persist, and this spring and summer, I can't wait to see what the Olentangy will offer up. If you have not subscribed to my blog posts, be sure to do so, and then you'll get word of my photographs and images as soon as I post them here. Spring will be here soon!
Tom

Looking over a backwater channel of the Olentangy River, with Graceland Shopping Center in the background.

More on the Olentangy and Ohio Flooding

Last night I went to check the Olentangy River, and the water was up higher than yesterday. Actually, it was higher than I have ever seen it. The first picture is from last night, the second is from two nights ago. Hopefully, the river has crested. Although the two pictures aren't perfectly the same, you can see where the water has risen by comparing the trees. Also, a patch of upland vegetation was completely submerged last night that was dry two nights ago.

 

 

Just for kicks, I went to the USGS Ohio water resources website to see if the Olentangy is retreating. The simple answer, it isn't. I'm sure that water is gradually being released from the Delaware dam, and we might see these high levels for the next day or so. In fact, I just looked again at the USGS site for this stream guage, and they say that the stream is "is completely regulated by the Delaware Dam since 1951." Here is a nice graph provided by the USGS of current water levels on the Olentangy at Worthington, which is just a few miles above where I shot the pictures:



This graph measures the total water flowing through the stream past the gauge. Normally in August, the average is less than 100 cubic feet of water per second. Wednesday night, when the second picture was taken, the river was discharging about 2000 cubic feet of water per second, and last night, that figure had risen to about 3500 cubic feet per second and rising! That is a ton of water!

In fact, according to the USGS, during the last 40 years, we have set a record for August 24th. The highest recorded discharge for this part of the stream on this day was 2990 cubic feet per second, which we reached in 1980.

So, I'm wondering what the maximum discharge recorded for this station has been?

USGS has that information too. Looking at this graph, the Olentangy is holding its own. Discharges of 5000-6000 cubic feet per second happen about every year, although I'm not sure why there is such a large gap in the middle of the graph. I'm glad I wasn't around in the flood that happened about 1960. 15000 cubic feet per second would have been a real doozy.




So, lets turn now to the Blanchard river, which caused all the flooding in Findlay, Ohio.

The Blanchard is rather calm and placid in August, with discharges averaging less than 100 cubic feet per second, about the same as the Olentangy River. So remember, the Olentangy is way up and it is only discharging less than 4000 cubic feet per second. Here is what the Blanchard has done over the last week:



Take a look at the scale. Yes, the river peaked at just under 20,000 cubic feet per second! That is a ton of water, and that is why there was such catastrophic flooding the in the area. When that much water is flowing through the river, it just simply floods its banks and goes where it normally doesn't go. Lets look at the historical graph for the Blanchard to see how this flood compares with historical highs.



And there you go. You have had to been alive in 1915, it looks like, to see have seen a flood like Findlay has experienced. That the peak flow was over 20,000 cubic feet per second! Yes, they do happen, but not very often, at least when compared to the life span of a human being. In geologic time, floods like this are common.

My thoughts this morning go out to all across Ohio that were affected by all of this rain that northwestern Ohio has seen in the past week.

Tom