Blowing out the ice bridges

Looking at the East Branch stream flow gage and the radar it sure looks like the combination of the warm temps and rapid flow to come are going to take out the ice bridges on trails and maybe cause a few ice jams. About the only thing that really helps is the snowpack just isn't that deep.

peakbagger said:

Looking at the East Branch stream flow gage and the radar it sure looks like the combination of the warm temps and rapid flow to come are going to take out the ice bridges on trails and maybe cause a few ice jams. About the only thing that really helps is the snowpack just isn't that deep.

Click to expand...

I was wondering the other day what the low snow pack will mean for river levels this coming Summer. Water was so low last year, with many rivers dry and with so much more snow, if the rain is not steady this year it could be a real problem. Still early but it is setting up for a problem.

And before the summer season it could be an interesting spring fire season in the northeast. Praying for snow, but not holding my breath.

And FWIW, the ice did go out sometime Tuesday afternoon/evening on the East Branch at Lincoln.

A repeat of a week ago, The water gauge on the east branch of the Pemi was up 5' overnight (Wednesday 2/26). This generally is a good indication that whatever ice bridges may have existed last week are probably gone for this weekend. I expect Isolation via Rocky Branch is probably not a good hike for the weekend despite the fine forecast. This is definitely 4 to 6 weeks early although early melts can and have occurred in the past.

Not looking too promising for skiing into Baxter in 9 days

Tim

If this weather keeps up I wonder if BSP will close early due to mud season. Looking at the summits of Adams and Madison this afternoon there is more rock showing than snow and the "7" snowfield in Kings Ravine is starting to look pretty ragged.

I was looking at the USGS water gauge for the Pemi East Branch and the gauge shot up to almost 6000cfps after this storm, which is really high. Expanding the view, this is the 3rd rain event in February, whereas last year the last rain event was in January (Pats/Colts AFC championship). I suppose a positive spin is that the last rain even took out most of the ice, so hopefully no major ice dams formed because of this. I tried comparing this winter to 97/98 (last strong El Nino) but there wasn't any gauge data. I did find this nice write-up, which does mention the huge ice-storm that I'm guessing trail maintainers remember quite well: http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/techrpts/tr9802/tr9802.pdf

I was down in the Bristol area yesterday and the icing on the softwoods was looking significant. All the needles were large clumps. The trees stayed like that and I was dreading heading back north but sometimes around 5 PM or so the temps started to warm up and the drive north was in deluge along with gusty winds. If the cold hadn't scoured out near the ground it could have been a nasty icing event.