New England Flooding: A Small Town's Story

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Discussion Overview

The discussion centers around the recent flooding experienced in a small town in New England, particularly focusing on the impact of heavy rainfall over a short period. Participants share personal experiences, observations of local conditions, and the effects of the flooding on their homes and community infrastructure.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory
  • Debate/contested
  • Conceptual clarification
  • Personal accounts

Main Points Raised

  • One participant describes the significant rainfall and flooding in their town, sharing images of affected areas, including roads and a farm.
  • Another participant notes that many homes experienced water damage, particularly in basements and main floors.
  • A participant reflects on their past experiences with flooding in New Hampshire, suggesting that the current weather is unusual.
  • One participant recounts a previous flooding incident that damaged local infrastructure, including bridges, and mentions the historical context of their town's name.
  • Concerns are raised about the structural integrity of a nearby dam that has been weakened and is at risk of collapsing.
  • Several participants share personal experiences of water infiltration in their homes, with one detailing the challenges of managing water in their basement.
  • Discussion includes the emotional impact of the prolonged rain and its effects on daily life, such as feelings of depression due to the persistent darkness.
  • Participants express relief that the flooding primarily involved rainwater rather than sewage, although some areas did experience sewage backups due to sewer system failures.
  • There is mention of ongoing weather concerns, with forecasts predicting additional rain, raising worries about further flooding.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants generally agree on the severity of the flooding and its impact on the community, but multiple competing views remain regarding the adequacy of local infrastructure and the historical context of flooding events. The discussion remains unresolved regarding the best solutions for managing water runoff and preventing future flooding.

Contextual Notes

Participants express uncertainty about the effectiveness of proposed drainage solutions and the potential conflicts with local government regulations. There are also references to varying degrees of flooding experienced in different areas, indicating a lack of uniformity in the impact across the region.

Who May Find This Useful

This discussion may be of interest to residents of New England, particularly those living in flood-prone areas, as well as individuals studying the effects of extreme weather on small communities.

Gale
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I don't know if anyone heard the news last week and saw the insane amount of rain we got here, but it rained loads and there was a lot of flooding. i was at school, a bit south, so i was fine. back home, the town was flooded quite a bit. i mean, i know its not New Orleans or anything that extreme at all. but its amazing to me to see the pictures. I have a few of the farm my brother works at, and the roads by my house, and the damn down the road.
http://img460.imageshack.us/img460/5244/townflooding309wa.jpg
Thats the road behind the grocery store... and that parking lot...
http://img460.imageshack.us/img460/1618/townflooding1309xi.jpg
thats the damn down the road.
http://img482.imageshack.us/img482/4838/townflooding2301cg.jpg
one of the roads near downtown of the town next to us.
http://img482.imageshack.us/img482/7530/townflooding4308uk.jpg
thats the farm downtown that my brother works on.
http://img482.imageshack.us/img482/6500/townflooding3305ig.jpg
thats the farm again, you can see a canoe full of pumpkins behing the table... my brother and his friend had to go canoeing to harvest the pumpkins.
Anyway, i thought it was crazy to see the flooding so close to home. its not THAT bad... but you know... still crazy.
and yes, and you can very well see, i live in a very small town in backwoods new hampshire heh. its quaint though, i like it.
 
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lol Yes it must be small if there is a farm Downtown. I hope everything gets to dry out, I heard lots of homes got water in the basements and main floor.
 
That's pretty bad, Gale. We never had any floods of that severity the whole time I lived in NH. Pretty freak weather.
 
We had flooding pretty bad last spring. it wiped out a bridge on the road next to mine, so everyone had to detour on my road, (which isn't exactly a big road..) I'm sure if it hadn't been washed out then, it would've been now. a few bridges were washes out actually. As you'll see, there's a river that goes right by tenny's (the farm ALMOST downtown... its like, an 8th of a mile from actual downtown... hehe... you we're small, but they sell ice cream and hot cider!)
http://img457.imageshack.us/img457/304/antrimflooding7gw.png
thats a little map of antrim, so you can see it all. its a real small town. they got it real bad 3 towns over, and even worse in keene, about 40 miles away.
also, side note, I've been looking up pictures of antrim, and i read through some history... apparently we're named after something in ireland... kinda neat... anyway..
 
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I thought that dam looked like it had been topped. It just didn't look right

THey've been worrying about a 137 year old wooden dam in Taunton (MA) here for about the past week. It's been weakend and on the brink of collapsing, and it looks like we're going to get more rain :eek:

Side note: Gale I thought you said in another thread that you were going to U-Mass, or am I confusing you with someone else?
 
I was on Long Island last week on vacation. I was there for three of the eight straight days that it rained. What a mess. The high school by my old house had about 100 seagulls WADING/FLOATING on it's football field. I don't think I was in a single house or building that wasn't leaking some way.
 
Officially, we had a little over 8 inches (20.3 cm) of rain in about 48 hrs (Oct 7-9), then last Wed-Fri (Oct 12-14) we got 6.5 inches (16.5 cm). I stayed up most of the night to pump water out of the basement which was coming in at a rate of 1-2 gal/min. As I pumped down the water, I found one joint between two blocks that was spewing water like a water fountain, but only the size of a straw. I knew then it was going to be a long day. It took until Sunday afternoon for the water infiltration to subside. Now I just have a damp basement. Next major project is building a drain system to permanently address they hydrology of the property. Unfortunately, that will bring me in conflict with the local government - again ( :biggrin: ).

The lady next door had over a foot of water in her basement. If I had not stayed up late during last Friday into Saturday, I would have had foot of water in my basement.

Other folks had is worse - ruptured sewer lines, backed up sewage into basements, some homes lost.
 
At least it was just rain water...right? no sewage?
Isn't this the fall tourest time?
 
ya, in the dam picture, only half of the ground you see there is the dam. the water was way too high and took out most of the roads by the dam. Fortunately, my house is up on a hill, so my family was fine. though, i guess the stream we have overflowed a bit, but mostly the water ran down to the marsh behind my house.

ya, i know many places got hit way worse. 101 to keene, one of the major roads had to be closed down a long way because keene was hit so hard.

all that rain totally sucked too. i was so depressed that whole week... it felt like we'd never see the sun agian. i had trouble sleeping normal hours... and it was so sad, cause no matter what time of day i woke, it was always so dark.

yes, i go to Umass.
 
  • #10
hypatia said:
At least it was just rain water...right? no sewage?
Isn't this the fall tourest time?
Yes it was rainwater - or at that point, groundwater. We are up high, however, there is about 30 feet of hill behind us and it is mostly rock, so the rain has nowhere to go but through our property. The solution will be to dig a trench and fill it with gravel, however it should drain to a lower point, which would be about 100 m E or W, and that would go through other properties. Going out to the utility easement would be problem since the local water district just installed a water line - which we have to pay for whether we use it or not. I would rather have had a storm drain, which is in planning, but that may take one or more years.

Some folks in the nearby city unfortunately had sewage flood their basements because the a portion of the sewer system collapsed. That is a potential problem in any urban area.

My sister has a friend from Keene whose parents lost their house - flood took it.

Well, it's still 'leaf season' in the NE, at least around where Tom and I live.

We are supposed to get more rain this weekend. Hopefully not too much. The streams are still running high.
 

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