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Friday, January 07, 2005

Wow, I wish I had a reason or tickets to go to CES! 100" televisions, HD Tivo, all those portable gadgets -- if only. The keyword for this weekend is flood. All of the minor rivers in the area (little miami, great miami, mill creek, and the licking river) are already at least 10' beyond flood stage. And the Ohio river is less than 12" from leaving its banks this morning, another 2' total and some of the streets downtown will be underwater. All of the expensive property is at least 30' above the river, but the stadiums, parks, and a bunch of floating restaurants are right along the banks. They're estimating that the river will crest at some point on Monday at about 56' (the banks are 52' high downtown), but that doesn't account for us getting any rain this weekend or any rain on Monday. The last flood was in 1997 and the river crested at about 64' which placed it as the 9th worst flood in Cincinnati history. I don't really know how much rain the area can withstand before we get close to that number, but when the river gets that high it causes quite a bit of the area to be underwater for several days. Another issue is saturation. On Wednesday night I walked out in the front yard to dispose of the Christmas tree and I was squishing all the way. Any major rain next week on saturated ground will just run off into the rivers. 12" of melting snow and 3" of rain over the past week caused the river to rise from it's usual, controlled, 35' to over 50. If that same 3" of rain falls again next week it wouldn't be hard for us to hit 65' because the plants and the ground can't help. The numbers go up and up every day! It's dry where we live though as the house sits on top of a giant hill. Every direction is down, and this week, very wet.
// posted by Cauthon @ 1/07/2005 08:35:00 AM   [ 0 Comments ]  Click here to add your 2 cents!
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