ApacheTrout Posted May 16, 2011 Share Posted May 16, 2011 Via BTV .CLIMATE... BTV IS FAST APPROACHING THE WETTEST METEOROLOGICAL SPRING (MARCH...APRIL...AND MAY) ON RECORD. THE CURRENT RECORD OF 15.46 INCHES WAS SET IN THE SPRING OF 1983. AS OF 12 AM MONDAY (5/15)...BTV HAS RECEIVED 15.09 INCHES THIS SPRING WHICH IS CURRENTLY 2ND PLACE. WITH CONTINUED CHANCES FOR RAIN THROUGH THE WEEK...IT SEEMS CERTAIN A NEW RECORD WILL BE REACHED. Since Saturday, many places in Vermont and the Adirondacks have received between 2 and 4 inches of rain. Lake Champlain, which already shattered the previous high water mark of 102.1' (set in 1869) when it reached 103.2 on May 6, is forecast to again exceed the old mark and reach 102.5 feet or higher by Wednesday. Damage from the record setting spring precipitation isn't just limited to flooded homes, closed roads, and eroded shorelines. The Ti Ferry, which connects Shoreham, VT with Ticonderoga, NY, remains closed as cars can't access the ferry landing due to the high water. The wet spring has also kept many farmers and their cows out of the fields, which means the farmers delay planting corn and must purchase additional feed, as their cows can't access sloppy hay fields for fear of destroying the grass instead of simply grazing the top portion. Farmers are also unable to spread liquid manure (not really complaining about that, as it's a significant source of phosphorus into Lake Champlain), which means they'll soon be out of storage space. But while the damage here is building, it must be noted that this event is simply dwarfed by the scale and scope of the flooding in the Mississippi Valley. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
powderfreak Posted May 16, 2011 Share Posted May 16, 2011 Yeah I mentioned this in the NNE thread but this has been a ridiculously wet spring. Just amazing the amount of rain we've had... though some of that precipitation was in the form of snow. There was that big 2"+ QPF event on March 7-8 that produced widespread 20-30" snowfall totals, and that got the ball rolling by increasing snowpacks to very high levels at seasons end... then the melt-out included a lot of heavy rain events, especially in April. BTV saw 7.88" of rain in April (more in the mountains) and that fell on top of snow-water equivalents that were in the 5-10" range, with up to 15" at the summits. Bottom line is it was a historic amount of water flowing into the Lake Champlain basin, creating a 150 (or more) year flood. Plywood on the front windows to help stop the waves from crashing right into the living room. U.S. Coast Guard Station in Burlington has been surrounded by water and debris for weeks now. More pictures from the Burlington Free Press website... This one is the most impressive for me... this little beach is like a mile south of the Burlington waterfront park and a college student hang-out. The left side is the normal water level and on the right you can see that its like 6-7 feet above the normal level. That's a lot of water required to raise the 6th largest lake in the United States all the way up to unprecedented levels. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
powderfreak Posted May 16, 2011 Share Posted May 16, 2011 Can't buy a break up here... it is pouring outside right now. Just more water to flow into Lake Champlain. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ginx snewx Posted May 16, 2011 Share Posted May 16, 2011 Impressive, waterfront property is great until..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nzucker Posted May 16, 2011 Share Posted May 16, 2011 Are people still living in the homes shown, or have there been a lot of evacuations? How many people have had to move, Scott? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr Torchey Posted May 16, 2011 Share Posted May 16, 2011 That is just awful.............be safe up there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CoastalWx Posted May 16, 2011 Share Posted May 16, 2011 I can't believe the flooding up there. Not one peep of it down here, which is weird. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ApacheTrout Posted May 16, 2011 Author Share Posted May 16, 2011 Had over an inch of rain here since 7 am. 9.46 inches of rain (not melted precip) since March 1. Add in the water from the 2' plus of snow on March 6/7 and then a few other events, and then you come up with a whole lot of water, heading to one big lake with one small outlet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
j24vt Posted May 16, 2011 Share Posted May 16, 2011 This picture was taken a couple summers ago when the lake level was at 99'. The current level is approximately at the height of my right elbow. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
powderfreak Posted May 16, 2011 Share Posted May 16, 2011 Are people still living in the homes shown, or have there been a lot of evacuations? How many people have had to move, Scott? I honestly have no idea on evacuations. I've heard some people are living on their 2nd floors and stuff like that, others in Red Cross shelters. There's a lot of this type of stuff in the Burlington suburbs... where people are parking their cars and then using boats to get home. Other thing is there are a lot of flooded roadways in low spots, so even if your house is elevated, you may need to leave your car and take a boat to get to your still-dry property. Adds another leg to your daily commute into Burlington, haha. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
j24vt Posted May 16, 2011 Share Posted May 16, 2011 Do I know the person on the left? He has a big silver trophy in his window at the Mountain This picture is of the same hoist a week ago... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
powderfreak Posted May 16, 2011 Share Posted May 16, 2011 He has a big silver trophy in his window at the Mountain This picture is of the same hoist a week ago... Haha, I figured there was no way that couldn't be Mike. Small world. Have you guys been out on the lake much yet? I've heard from some people that have tried that there's just too much big debris floating around from the flooding. Nothing like hitting a 100-year old Maple tree that's been uprooted and is now floating in the middle of the lake. One of my friend's who runs a kite-surfing operation says the biggest hazard is hitting some large debris (just about anything that could float), forcing your boat to start taking on water, and given that the water temp is still only listed as 40F by the NWS, you really wouldn't have very long to live in that water. I see in that above photo you guys have wet or dry suits on which is a great call at 40 degrees, haha. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
j24vt Posted May 16, 2011 Share Posted May 16, 2011 The J24 won't be going in for a while. I need the lake level to drop to close to 99' before we cna use the hoist. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Allenson Posted May 17, 2011 Share Posted May 17, 2011 Wow, crazy pictures, guys. We're hardly hearing anything about this on this side of VT.... Also, it hasn't been nearly as wet here apparently. Here are my precip numbers: March: 4.51" April: 5.78" May: 2.32" so far.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ApacheTrout Posted May 17, 2011 Author Share Posted May 17, 2011 Did you take melted snow measurements? I'm pretty sure the BTV figures include melted snow. Wow, crazy pictures, guys. We're hardly hearing anything about this on this side of VT.... Also, it hasn't been nearly as wet here apparently. Here are my precip numbers: March: 4.51" April: 5.78" May: 2.32" so far.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ginx snewx Posted May 17, 2011 Share Posted May 17, 2011 I can't believe the flooding up there. Not one peep of it down here, which is weird. Saw it on CNN last week but none here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
powderfreak Posted May 17, 2011 Share Posted May 17, 2011 Did you take melted snow measurements? I'm pretty sure the BTV figures include melted snow. They do not include melted snow. Here are precipitation amounts by month for BTV: March... 3.39" April... 7.88" May... 4.47" (so far) Total since March 1st... 15.74" (new record) Equally impressive is Precipitation since January 1... twice the normal value over 5 months. Normal... 10.76" 2011... 20.20" Now, this was a big snow year up here, too, with widespread deep snowpack entering late March and April. The anomalies may not be as much as down in SNE but the numbers are still impressive. Snowfall from Oct-May for BTV: Average: 83.1" Actual: 128.3" Departure: +45.3" Overall... La Nina's wetter than normal across the northern tier has certainly been in place over this past winter and the water continues to come out of the sky. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
powderfreak Posted May 17, 2011 Share Posted May 17, 2011 Wow, crazy pictures, guys. We're hardly hearing anything about this on this side of VT.... Also, it hasn't been nearly as wet here apparently. Here are my precip numbers: March: 4.51" April: 5.78" May: 2.32" so far.... You actually had more precipitation in March than BTV, but are down just over 4" in April and May combined. The big difference and the "kicker" that really took this spring flood and snowmelt season to the next level was April 26 and the torrential thunderstorms that just sat over most of northern and northwestern Vermont. In Stowe we picked up over 3" in about 4 hours during the 9pm-1am time frame (falling on top of still deep mountain snowpack) and that led to the worst flash flooding this town has seen since 1926, including police going door-to-door to get people out of homes in the middle of the night. In those storms, BTV picked up 2.74" plus 0.18" that fell after midnight... so they were right around 3" in under a 6-hour period I think. After that event we saw 4-5 foot trenches dug into the upper elevation snowpack where the water had to escape down the hillsides. That was an incredible rain event. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
powderfreak Posted May 17, 2011 Share Posted May 17, 2011 Oh yeah, and its still raining. Haha, this is unbelievable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J.Spin Posted May 18, 2011 Share Posted May 18, 2011 Here are precipitation amounts by month for BTV:March... 3.39" April... 7.88" May... 4.47" (so far) Total since March 1st... 15.74" (new record) Equally impressive is Precipitation since January 1... twice the normal value over 5 months. Normal... 10.76" 2011... 20.20" I don't have long term records for my location, but presumably this season would be high on the precipitation list considering that there is some similarity between what hits Burlington and what hits us 18 miles to the east. However, it actually looks like Burlington has been getting hit harder with precipitation than spots to the east, so this might not be a record event all over. At the house we have still picked up significantly more rain than Burlington: 18.69” for March through May (118.7% vs. BTV) and 25.17” since January 1 (124.6% vs. BTV) but we are not as far ahead as usual it seems. For the 2010 calendar year our location’s total liquid ran at 133.0% of BTV and 136.2% of MPV, and this calendar year we seem to be tracking right along the same way vs. MPV (for 2011 so far we are at a very similar 137.4% of their precipitation) but at only 124.6% of BTV’s precipitation. Just based off the numbers for the three sites, without having long-term averages/records for my location and MPV, I’d guess that BTV is having the biggest deviation from their average. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
powderfreak Posted May 28, 2011 Share Posted May 28, 2011 This is absolutely ridiculous... Vermont is absolutely saturated. Rainfall amounts over the past 72 hours look like snowfall reports with ASOS stations like Saint Johnsbury and Montpelier seeing 4-7" since Thursday afternoon. BTV has now had the wettest May on record following the wettest April on record... both months beating the record by over an inch... the old records didn't have a chance this spring and BTV has a long period of record dating back to the 1800s. .CLIMATE... RECENT NWS BURLINGTON PCPN DATA WETTEST MAY 8.26 INCHES IN 2011 (AS OF 8AM EDT 5/28) 7.10 INCHES IN 2006 6.31 INCHES IN 1983 WETTEST APRIL 7.88 INCHES IN 2011 6.55 INCHES IN 1983 6.12 INCHES IN 1996 METEOROLOGICAL SPRING - MAR/APR/MAY 19.53 INCHES IN 2011 (AS OF 8AM EDT 5/28) 15.46 INCHES IN 1983 12.77 INCHES IN 2000 It continues to rain across central and northern Vermont. This is absurd. The photos of the flooding in the state capital from Thursday evening are incredible. I'll try to find some to post. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
klw Posted May 31, 2011 Share Posted May 31, 2011 I don't have a link but on VPR this morning they said it was also St. J's wettest spring on record by 6 inches. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.