My mother's house is currently underwater, suffering the third "100 year flood" in the last six years. This is the biggest yet, a "500 year flood", with the highest water on record. My quick calculation suggests that three such floods in that time frame, assuming floods are normally distributed, is about a four-sigma event. Which should be quite unusual. I suspect that the model used to predict floods of the Susquehanna River is not a very good one.

The last flood crested at 35.9 feet, and did substantial damage to the first floor of my mother's house. The current flood is projected to crest at 39.8 feet. My mother did receive a several hours of warning, courtesy of an automatic call from the town, which she spent in moving stuff from the basement and first floor to the second floor, and also getting things out of the garage to the extent possible. In the true spirit of community, two neighbors came over to help. I considered driving down to assist, but by the time I'd heard of the flood, if I drove straight there I'd have to swim the last part of the way. I have a good car, but it's no Humvee.

When she had moved all she could and the water was close, my mother evacuated and spent the night with her eldest daughter's in-laws. Today she was planning on continuing on to stay with her daughter. I hope to come down and help with the cleanup once the water recedes. I expect that my professors will be understanding.

If anyone wants to see the output of the river gauge in her town, here are two good sites: the US Geological Survey's and the National Weather Service's. They present the data in different ways. The first one also has a flow graph, which (as of 1600 on 08 Sep 2011) indicates the current instantaneous flow rate is 144,000 cfs. As a point of comparison, the flow rate on this date in 2010 was 1450 cfs. That hundredfold jump is not good.

The news is reporting various bridges out, but I'm moderatly confident that the main bridge from Owego to I-86 will be intact, as it's quite high. Of course, it's piers could be undermined. And there's a neat little historical marker on end of the bridge that mentions the previous bridges on that location that had been swept away.

So, I will summarize. There's a bad flood right now at my mother's place. My mother is safe. Her house is likely be inundated much higher than last time. And it was only this summer that the damage from the last flood was finally repaired. I'm just hoping that the water stays below the level of the second floor, where she had moved as much of her chattel property as she could.

Not-so-pretty pictures:




UPDATE: The river gauge stopped reporting at 0800 on 08 Sep 2011, because the gauge has a design maximum of 38 feet. That's how bad a flood this is.

Posted by: Boviate at 03:07 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 515 words, total size 64 kb.