December 2nd, 2011

My weather station at the Blair OEEC recorded a total of fifty-four millimeters of rain during the storm  earlier this week.  54!!  Five and a half centimeters.  That’s a lotta rain. 48 hours later the Grand River is still in flood as it drains such a huge watershed.  At Doon, just upstream from Blair, the Grand peaked at over 250 cubic metres of water per second compared with summer flows of about 11 m3/s.   That would be comparable to the volume of water my classroom would hold at 10m x 7m x 3.5m every second.  Figure out how much that would be in a minute; an hour; a day.  Just downstream in Galt the flow peaked only a few hours ago at over 350 m3/s.  A number of small streams, including Blair Creek,  empty into the Grand between Doon and Galt accounting for the much higher volume. (river flows from data from the Grand River Conservation Authority)

Things look much different this morning with snow falling lightly on the fields and forest – it should be a great day for the Grade 1’s studying Daily and Seasonal Changes!!

Here is a little video of Blair Creek “after the rain”.  There have been more severe floods in the past but anything that buries my bridges under water is significant.