Lake Champlain Flood Continues, Won't Go Away Soon

Lake Champlain has been above flood stage since Sunday morning, and the high water isn't going to end anytime soon.

Floods along the lake tend to last days and weeks anyway, as so many rivers and streams feed in. There's only one outlet - the Richelieu River in Quebec It's like pouring multiple buckets of water into  a bathtub with the drain open.

You can fill a tub that way faster than it will drain. The same is true with Lake Champlain.

As of this afternoon, Lake Champlain was at 100.63 feet, or about six-tenths of a foot above flood stage.

At least the lake has pretty much stopped rising, at the moment. A USGS graph shows the water level not changing much since late yesterday. It's up just 0.03 feet in the seven hours ending at 2 p.m., which is just a rounding error.

Rainfall last night was probably not enough to add much of an additional surge to Lake Champlain, if anything. Snow melt from the mountains probably added a little extra runoff during Tuesday afternoon's warm temperatures.  That rain and snow melt probably delayed a flood crest, though.

The rise in Lake Champlain's lake level was stalling at just
above 100.6 feet today. It's more than a  half foot above
flood stage. When it starts receding that process will be slow. 

Cooler weather that is expected to be locked in for a week or so probably means what little snow remains in the mountains will not melt much. In fact, new snow was falling on some peaks today, including the summit of Mount Mansfield.

The weather pattern will remain unsettled and frequently showery, which would further delay or slow any retreat of Lake Champlain flood water.

We'll need to watch a storm on Friday, which has the potential to a least slightly increase the flow of water into Lake Champlain. Beyond that, it's too soon to tell whether any storms will have an influence on the flooding.

While the lake is flooding, the biggest danger from any real damage is if we have particularly windy days, which would send battering waves against shorelines, causing erosion, road damage and possibly even damage to lakeside camps.

Northwest winds were causing one to two foot waves today. The next real chance of bigger waves comes Saturday, when expected northwest winds could create three-foot waves.

If you want a brighter side, at least this Lake Champlain flood won't be nearly as bad as the worst on record, in 2011.  The flooding that year came from a combination of a deep, moisture rich mountain snow pack and record amounts of rain in April and May.

We certainly won't have record amounts of rain this month, and the risk of such rainfall records next month is minimal at best.