This is the second part of the '10 flood set.
The rain finally stopped and it cleared overnight, and the next morning was bright and sunny and warm. The bad news was that the water had risen even higher overnight, but some good news came as evidence that it had probably peaked already.
[Click small pictures to see full-size versions.]
Our benchmark "pumphouse curve" shot again: close to engulfing the guard rail by now. This is about how it looked in '06, too. |
My attempt to go around to the low spot of Burroughs again was now stymied by a big puddle near the sharp Burroughs / Old Andover bend! This was all clear yesterday. |
The low spot out on Gould Road / Central St near the rifle club was still covered, but quite a bit *lower*. I stopped here and walked into it to check, and just as I got back to the car another Prius arrived behind me and the occupants asked if they should try going through. I said *I* was about to confidently go through myself, so off they went. [No problem, no uncontrolled acceleration ...] |
But no relief on the downstream end of things yet: another check of the first "dip" on Burroughs, much higher than yesterday and looking about like it did in '06. |
The bridge was covered at this point too. |
Here's where I found my best comparison "height gauge": Paul's mailbox post, from '06 [left] and '10 [right], and assuming its height hasn't changed over the years. It looks like the only difference has been a coat of paint. Note where the water is relative to the diagonal brace. It looks like '06 was a couple of inches higher, from both that and the rock wall. |
The boat launch was buried again, as expected. But here it was easy enough to go out toward 28 and around to the other side that way. |
Some attempts to shoot from the boat-launch and Batchelder Ave area,
out across the pond to see where the waterline was relative to Clarke
park and the houses.
Only a month and a half ago, this had all been 16 inches of glorious ice! |
Things across 28 weren't in very good shape either: the driving range and part of the flower-market building where Mad Maggie's used to be, all inundated. |
A re-check of the Rt. 62 bridge inlet side, where the concrete and measuring
scale are completely gone. It's kind of surprising that the sustained
pressure and fast flow through the two little holes doesn't erode away the
understructure of the bridge. Too bad; a well-timed washout would force
the decision for a badly-needed rebuild anyway, wouldn't it...
This more or less completed the circuit of the pond and related areas that I could get to without walking through major deep parts; at this point I continued on to the other part of the day's agenda: emptying a friend's basement over in Wilmington. |
An interesting vortex spinning over a storm drain. |
Bob Burg sent along these nice shots from the following morning, when it was apparently completely windless across the pond. Again, click on any small one for a larger version. | ||
Scott Ronco made two Flickr sets available, one from
Mar 15
while it was still raining, and one from
Mar 16
when the flood peaked.
Later, Lori got together with a local pilot and took a really great set of aerial shots, which really show just how fragile the little threads of normally dry land are that we depend on for neighborhood access. Compare some of these with the normal state of things as seen by Google Earth sat pix, for example. Some of these swamp areas only have one outlet, like a tidal pool, and have to drain back out the same way the water came in [i.e. through the pond]. The major drainage choke-points are clearly visible, one at the road-bridge between the two halves of the gravel quarry and the other where the stream passes under Rt. 62. |
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