Now's The Time To Start Watching Lake Champlain Lake Level

Lake Champlain waves crash onto Route 2 in Grand Isle in April, 2011 as
the lake was rising toward a record crest a few weeks later.

The first good thaw and rain of the spring came Thursday and Friday, which meant the first good rush of water into Lake Champlain since February.

This is the time of year when we'll begin to watch the water level of Lake Champlain creep upward.

As of Friday, the start of the melt season, the lake level was more than 3.5 feet below flood stage.

It might or might not get to the flood stage of 100 feet above sea level this spring. It depends on how much rain we get, and how fast the snow melts.

Flood stage on Lake Champlain is not a bad thing at all. The ecosystem of the lake needs its annual rise and fall to maintain itself. The floods help the natural cycle of wildlife. The lake doesn't reach flood stage every year, but even if it gets close, it helps with ecology of the lake.

Us humans, of course, don't like flooding, because we build things that can get wrecked too close to the shore. If the lake barely reaches flood stage - say it rises to between 100 and 100.5 feet above sea level, that really isn't a big deal. Which is good, because spring lake levels of just over 100 feet are pretty damn common.

At that level, some roads very close to the lake get flooded, the park at Perkins Pier in Burlington goes underwater and waves can cause some shoreline erosion around summer camps and such. But such flooding is just a routine part of spring.

Once you start getting water levels above 101 feet, damage starts to occur. The worst, flooding, during the memorable spring of 2011, brought Lake Champlain water levels to a record 103.27 feet. As we remember, there was widespread, very extensive damage around the lake in Vermont, New York and Quebec.

As for this year, it doesn't look like we'll come anywhere close to those levels in 2011, unless there are unprecedented rains, even beyond the record downpours of April and May, 2011.  In other words, no worries.

It's unclear as to whether we'll even make it to the minor flood stage of 100 feet above sea level. It could, because there's still plenty of snow in the mountains and an active jet stream means we have the potential for relatively frequent rains and snows - at least through the first half of April.

On the other hand, if the storms are small and the snow melt is gradual, the lake level won't rise all that much.

As we see the lake level slowly rise in April, take it this way - it's a sign spring is really taking hold. We still might need to wait a little while for full on spring. But on a snowy early April day when you notice the lake is a bit higher than it was a week earlier, you can still have confidence warmer days are ahead.

Five Years Ago Today: More Than Two Feet Of Snow

Buried cars in Burlington, Vermont, March, 2011

It's going to turn out to be a springlike week in Vermont, unlike the same week five years ago as we were recovering from one of the deepest snowstorms on record.

Burlington received 25.8 inches of snow on March 6-7, enough to be the third greatest snowstorm on record.

The snow fell atop an already deep snow pack which led to destructive flooding later that spring when the snow melted and heavy rain arrived.

The flooding was bad along Vermont's rivers, and even worse along the shores of Lake Champlain, which had record flooding.

Snow clogged street in Burlington, Vermont, March, 2011

As if to demonstrate how extreme March can be, the very next year, 2012, brought a March that was by far the warmest on record. It featured a week during which daily high temperatures were in the upper 70s and low 80s, pretty close to July levels.

But in March, 2011, we were digging out, thinking that spring would never get there. But it did, after that flood disaster.

This post contains photos of what Burlington, Vermont looked like during and after that storm.

(Shudder)

Church Street, Burlington, Vermont, March 2011

First Real Tornado, Severe Weather Outbreak Of The Season This Week

Tis the season, unfortunately.  

A huge tornado roars through Xenia, Ohio
on April 4, 1974. It was part of what was
until 2011 the largest tornado outbreak in U.S.
history. Another tornado outbreak is
likely this week, the 40th anniversary
of this one, but luckily it won't be nearly as big.  

Tornado season.  Which looks like it might get underway in earnest this week.

In March and April, the nation's midsection is very often raked by a lot of tornadoes and severe thunderstorms.

This year has so far been rather quiet tornado season, thanks to the very chilly March in much of the eastern two thirds of the nation.

(Severe thunderstorms and tornadoes need warm, humid air to form, something that was mostly lacking this March)

According to the the National Storm Prediction Center, there had been 46 tornadoes in the nation through March 26, compared to an average of about 130 by then.

It looks like we might catch up and get closer to the normal count by the end of the week.

There will probably be a few tornadoes in the Midwest today, especially around Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri and Arkansas, areas that generally are most likely to get tornadoes this time of year.

It doesn't look like there will be too many tornadoes today, but there will probably be a number of reports of big hail and strong winds.

The chances of tornadoes increases on Thursday and there could be quite a few of them, possibly a dozen or more. That's not the biggest outbreak you can get, but that's still cause for concern.

The most likely region for tornadoes Thursday is in the lower Mississippi Valley, from southern Illinois south.

Tomorrow's likely tornadoes come on the 40th anniversary of what was until recently the worst, biggest tornado outbreak in U.S. history.

On April 3-4, 1974, 148 tornadoes raked a big area of the country's midsection in less than 24 hours. 

What was scary about that storm is that 30 of the tornadoes were very strong, (EF4s and EF5s with winds of at least 166 mph.

The only tornado outbreak bigger and worse than the one in 1974 was on April 25-28, 2011, with 358 tornadoes, including 211 on just one day, April 27. The death toll was 348 in that one, compared to 330 in the 1974 outbreak.

Of course, with better radar and equipment, some tornadoes that wouldn't have been noticed in 1974 were caught in 2011.

In any event, this week's tornado outbreak doesn't look like it will be nearly as bad as 1974 or 2011, so we can take some comfort in that.

Still, let's hope all the tornadoes this week go through open country and not neighborhoods.