They say “April showers bring May flowers”.  I don’t know what they say about rain in May, but for Maryland at least, this past week the mantra has been “enough already”.

According to this month’s weather statistics, Hagerstown has received 3.55 inches of rain so far this month.  I’d say most of that has come in the past week.  The rain culminated in a freak storm this past Thursday that dumped an incredible amount of water on Southern Washington County and neighboring Frederick County.  Reports of as much as seven inches of rain fell in the span of two hours, causing major flash flooding and road damage.

Folks in that part of the state were reporting flooded basements, stranded cars, and other weather-related issues.  I can certainly sympathize.  It was just four years ago when my hometown of Clear Spring experienced a similar storm.  On June 13, 2014, the sky opened up and dumped over six inches of rain on our area in a little over an hour, causing the tiny creek that runs through downtown to become a torrent of water, damaging over thirty homes and causing thousands of dollars in damage during the ensuing water runoff.  My own basement was flooded, and I live on top of the hill in town.  The pressure of water on the outside trying to get in was so great that water was literally shooting out of the concrete block joints on the inside of the basement horizontally, as if someone had turned on a hose.  I felt like I was on a sinking ship, and the entire area filled with water in just a few hours, no matter how hard I bailed and pumped.

Locally, the way most of us “gauge” how bad the rain has been is by taking a trip down to the Potomac River to take a gander at Dam #5 and view the height of the river.  Dam #5 was built as part of the historic C&O Canal in 1835, has been through the Civil War, and in 1900 a small hydroelectric plant was added on the West Virginia side of the river to take advantage of the dam to create electricity[1].  If you want to know how high the Potomac River is getting, you hop in your car and take a trip down to the dam to see how things are looking.  In my time, I’ve seen both extremes at the dam.  Water so low that one could literally walk across the Potomac on top of the dam and not be hindered by the slow trickle of water to times when the water was so high that the dam itself was not even visible.

I took a trip down to the dam myself over the weekend to check things out.  It’s a leisurely drive on narrow back roads that twist and turn, following the contours of the river.  There’s a small parking lot near the dam, and one must then traverse a long footbridge over the remains of one of the C&O Canal’s many locks in order to get to the dam itself.

 

To quickly summarize – it’s high.  What strikes me first is the sound.  The roar of the water is incredible – so much more so if the river is up.  One has to shout to be heard over the din of the water pounding over the dam.  As I inched closer to the rocks surrounding the structure, the air was noticeably cooler, as there is an ever-present and humid spray of mist aloft.  The sight of thousands of gallons of water rushing across the barrier is breathtaking, and the sheer power of the undertow can clearly be seen as large trees and debris are constantly bobbing up and down in the frothy surf, being unforgivingly pulled back towards the falling water due to the strong current.  I saw logs as big as twenty feet long and over two feet wide being tossed about like straws in the angry waves.  The logs would disappear in the surf for long periods of time, then aggressively surface like a whale trying to get to the open air to gasp for a breath.

The other thing that struck me as odd was the amount of floating balls in the water, obviously pulled into the Potomac from yards along the river upstream.  There must have been half a dozen basketballs and soccer balls, tossing about like a wave pool without the swimmers.  Weird.

I’m sure Mother Nature will soon let up and the sun will return (at which time I may need a brush hog and hay baler to mow my lawn), but until then, the overcast, cool days and falling rain make an afternoon nap seem irresistible.

I think I shall indulge.

 

 

[1] Wikipedia contributors, “Power Plant and Dam No. 5 (Potomac River),” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Power_Plant_and_Dam_No._5_(Potomac_River)&oldid=771685063 (accessed May 19, 2018).