Susquehanna River--River of Time
(The Flood of 2006)

Beginning around 1.8 million years ago, huge polar ice fields advanced and retreated several times in the Northern Hemisphere. The most recent, called the Wisconsin stage, reached maximum extent in New York about 21, 000 years ago. The Susquehanna River corridor that we see today is the result of those ancient torrents draining away from the retreating glacier fronts, now tempered by centuries of erosion and decorated with the constructions of mankind.

All rivers start as trickles of rain and spring meltwaters that feed small rivulets and creeks. In the Susquehanna's case, these headwaters first fill Otsego Lake--the Glimmerglass of James Fenimore Cooper's novels--before coursing a 444-mile downward path to Havre De Grace, Maryland, where it empties into the Chesapeake Bay. As the river flows along it widens to almost 1 mile at Harrisburg, PA and drains nearly 27,500 square miles of the land area of New York, Pennsylvania and Maryland.

Most of the time, the Susquehanna stays in the channel it has cut through the valley it has constructed. But in times of high water, the river spills over onto adjacent flood plains, spreading beyond its banks. Unfortunately, the Susquehanna River Basin is one of the most flood prone areas in the entire nation, experiencing a major flood on average every 20 years. The basin's average annual flood damage is $113 million dollars.

An unusual combination of storms moved through central Pennsylvania and the southern tier of New York the last week of June 2006, depositing 8 to 15 inches of rain in as many hours. The torrential rains, combined with an already soaked basin from earlier rain events, caused flash flooding of monumental proportions, breaking all previous long-standing records. (As a gauge of the extreme nature of the flooding, the USGS has estimated that a event of this magnitude will not occur again for another 450 years. Damage estimates are still not fully developed but it is known that thousands of homes and businesses were severely impacted or destroyed, hundreds of bridges were swept away or left unstable, hundreds of miles of roadways were impacted, and hundreds of millions of dollars in property damage were incurred. In Pennsylvania, nine lives were lost during the event. In New York, three people died, one in Chenango County and two at the collapse of Interstate 88 in Delaware County. Approximately 200, 000 people were evacuated from their homes in the river basin area.

Adirondack Rains

It has been said that when it rains in the Adirondacks, you can smell the acrid ghosts of loggers of long ago. But today I think it is more likely the taint of acid rqain from midwest smokestacks that reaches us in these remote mountains, and reminds us yet again that living things, humans included, are all linked together in a huge web of life, and that we all suffer the consequences of what we do to the interconecting strands.

When it rains in the Adirondacks, oh, how it rains! When a summer night's storm passes through, it seems as if you can feel the full weight of it on the cabin roof over your head. But in the morning, the sun breaks through the clouds again and gives us a marvelous sight of diamonds hanging from the steaming leaves. We never lose hope of seeing the sun again, even in the severest storm, she keeps smiling behind the heavy curtains, and so shall we again.

The moments after a storm are magical. You can almost hear the rhythmical tap-tap-tapping as the gentle breeze releases the last remaining remnants of the downpour from their slippery purchases on tiny twigs and sloping leaves, and the woods are soft and silent and as peaceful as only the woodlands can be when civilization is miles and ages away. It is in these moments that one can almost hear those voices from the past, shades of voices pushing up through the leaves from logging camps now buried forever under the dense Adirondack foliage.

PATCH DESIGN INK ...my inspirations from nature for patch design and other related musings.