The past week…..

[Red Childress]

We have had a crazy change in river levels since yesterday. The river was running high at almost 10,000 CFS and was reduced to 763! I haven’t seen a sudden fluctuation like this in several years. My 2 guesses as to why this happened are: 1) The Corps is very worried about flooding on the lower Allegheny and Ohio rivers (tropical storms pushing North) or 2) there is a gate inspection/repair happening over the next few days.

Regardless of the reason, anything under 1200 CFS or so will make travel very treacherous/almost impossible (if driving an OUTBOARD jet) in the section between the Dam down to Warren. At 763, even the INBOARD jets will will make bottom contact around every island in that same 8.6 mile stretch. Be on the lookout for shore/wade fishermen when river levels are this low. Canoe and Kayakers with heavier loads will be doing lots of portaging over the next few days. The top graph shows the crazy reduction in outflow since yesterday. The bottom graph shows the river temp immediately increasing 4-5 degrees during this reduction of outflow.


The discharge forecast for the upcoming week says the outflow will bump back up to around 10,000 on Monday afternoon (approx). Crazy stuff!

[ppalko]

That would be fun the watch in real time! I’ve seen crazy drops and fish and the like get stranded everywhere. No rain on the lower river. Must be a gate issue. That would be pretty rough to run in any boat. That’s near the absolute minimum flow. Are they just running water through the power plant? They did that for an extended period one summer and caused a massive fish kill.

[Red Childress]

I received several texts since my morning post telling me the reason. Apparently, there is a missing 2-year old girl near the town of Tidioute……which explains the sudden closing of the gates. Very sad news. Every time the discharge is high, especially during summertime weekends, I get worried about these types of things.


I’ve never seen or heard about any big fish kills so it must have been pre-1993. The minimum discharge is at least down to 550-600 because I have seen it there before. Anything under 1000 is very tight for an outboard jet (especially North of Warren). I was told by a good source, most of the turbine water is released in the evenings to meet demand. The average cfs for power generation is like 150-300 cfs. You can see the overnite changes in temp and outflow with the right graphs.

I just checked the outflow and it is headed back to 10,000 (at 7000 now) and temps have dropped 6 degrees so far.

[Red Childress]

The body was found. Someone texted me around 4:30.