JohnC
Joined: 10 Jan 2004
Posts: 1939
Location: Glastonbury, Ct2/28/17 10:07 AM |
Flood adventure.
I haven't been doing much riding other than commuting for a while, but it was very nice to have those days hitting close to 70 last week. I rode home in shorts Friday, unprecedented for February.
Yesterday, however, I experienced another effect of the sudden warmup. My commute is mostly on roads, but includes a couple of miles of MUT through a park near the Connecticut River, including a section of path that was only opened last summer (and therefore has not been through a flood season).
I knew the river had been rising for a few days from snow melting upstream, but I didn't even think about whether any part of the new path might be flooding yet (I know how high the water has to get to impact other sections). When I came to a section with water on it, I rode on, thinking it might be only a few inches deep (which is no problem on the foul-weather fixie with cross tires that I ride for the winter commute). Wrong. By the time I realized my mistake, the water was up to the hubs, and when I stopped I was standing in ice water almost up to my knees (there was actually ice on the surface).
I waded back out and rode the long away around, thankfully only about 3 miles to work, or it might have been a problem having soaked shoes and socks with the temp around freezing. Managed to dry things out sufficiently for the ride home (temperature had risen to about 50).
I checked the USGS site with real-time stream height data from the automated gauge here in Hartford, and it turns out that from Friday midnight to the crest early this morning, the river rose almost 12 feet. Pretty impressive. It's going down slowly now, but it will need to drop about 4 feet before that (muddy) path will be rideable again.
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