“If anyone has pictures or video of flooding or road washouts around Ingonish and Neil’s Harbour, please share. Serious situation there right now. Some communities may be cutoff. Rain totals as of 6:23pm. 208.8 mm and counting at Ingonish River. We still have another 24+ hours of rain on the way.“
Southwestern Newfoundland braces for record-breaking rainfall
“Torrential rainfall over the next 24-26 hours will target an area from Port aux Basques to west of Burgeo. As much as 150-250 millimetres is forecasted for coastal communities with amounts of 300-400 mm possible in the higher terrain and mountainous regions. – SaltWire Network”
Note 400 mm is 8 inches*. Yikes!
…and we thought we got some.
Welcome to the Anthropocene.
What follows is an update.
*I see no one mentioned my boner. Note 400 mm is 15.75 inches!
“Port aux Basques recorded 165.1 millimetres of rain as of 6:30 a.m. Thursday, breaking the previous two-day rainfall record of 133.9 mm set April 28-29, 1982. A new 24-hour amount for a synoptic observation record was also set with 136.1 mm falling in a 24-hour period. The prior record was 118 mm set July 17-18, 1979.”
It turns out Newfoundland didn’t get 400 mm but it got a lot.
“I’ve been tallying up the storm rainfall amounts from Environment Canada and they are incredible. The highest amounts recorded in the Cape Breton Highlands, including 278 mm in Ingonish River, 263 mm in Ingonish Beach and 210 mm in Ingonish Centre. Other general rainfall amounts over eastern Nova Scotia generally ranged 100-160+ mm, with amounts of 200 mm in parts of the highlands.”
Over here we got lots, too. 278 mm is 11 inches for the girls I go with.
I was on the Ingonish River, years ago, in August. It was not impressive. The river looked almost dry. I have come to understand that a lot of the water is under the surface in the gravel. What that means for trout and salmon I am not sure. I read a book by Doug Rose on Olympic peninsula rivers in WA, years ago, where he claimed they lived deep in the gravel. I was never able to confirm it but it sure was unexpected. If true, it may explain how they can survive in rivers, like the Ingonish. The salmon guys are saying these floods have wiped out most of this year’s spawning. That is likely true as a vast amount of substrate was moved and ground up. I saw the aftermath of similar floods, a few years ago, in Cape Breton and the destruction was more than I expected.
Rain like this brings flash flood warnings here now. I don’t think they mean like the flash floods, Steve was so astounded by in his Querencia book, because the forest cover gets in the way, but 11 inches of rain in 2 days makes things happen.
