Turn Off the Rain!
Mom, I promise that I’ll never do another rain dance — ever!! Can you turn the rain off and bring out the sun again?
We’ve been doing practically daily rain dances for the past five years of drought and I guess someone was listening all along, albeit a bit late to the dance! Our long-range forecasters had forecasted another summer with 26% less precipitation, and they still are, believe it or not!!! All they need to do is open the blinds and look outside! Enough is Enough!!!! Turn off the rain! We’ve got more than what we can handle.
Your volunteers on the Inter-Local Dams Committee had been keeping the ponds around three inches above full pond, i.e. the water going over the spillways/walkways is ankle deep. But that ship has sailed! With yesterday’s warning from our very own Kennebec County Emergency Management Agency and the National Weather Service out of Gray, Maine:
A shift in the weather pattern is projected to bring abundant moisture to the region this weekend and continue through the end of the month. Multiple rounds of showers and embedded thunderstorms could lead to isolated flooding over the weekend, and set the stage for more widespread and impactful flooding next week. Historically these weather patterns have resulted in periods of heavy rainfall and flash flooding.
The forecast confidence is high that the region will be impacted by a prolonged wet period, however it is still too early to talk specifics. While we continue to monitor conditions and update you accordingly, please use this time to make preparations and notify interested parties in flood prone locations.
National Weather Service — Gray
(207) 688‑4081 — Operations
www.weather.gov/gyx
As of this writing, all of our ponds are a bit higher — OK, way too much higher! — than we would like, no thanks to these unrelenting showers! Great Pond’s Village dam is currently 4.44″ above full pond with one gate opened just 24″. Long Pond’s Wings Mill dam is right at 0.96″, also above full pond with both gates opened up to their maximum five feet.
If one were to only look at these metrics you would assume that Long Pond is in good shape, which, in reality, is far from the case. Upper Long Pond is 11″ above full pond, due to the water flow being held back at numerous choke points such as Castle Island, the mouth of Belgrade Steam at the lower end of Long Pond, and not to mention the 50′ × 5′ deep Spauling Bridge off of the Dunn Road! The bottom line is that it takes several days for the water in Long Pond’s upper basin to make the nine mile trip to Long Pond’s Wings Mill Dam and with these continuous showers, it’s proving almost impossible to get ahead of it.
Salmon/McGrath is 3.6″ above full with its calibrated valve set to the mandated 1 cfs flow and the gate opened three feet. Our neighbors on Messalonskee are down just 2.16″ below full, due to their electricity generation needs.
So, in summary, cancel all future rain dances and break out the Gore-Tex®!
If you have a particular questions regarding our dams and/or water levels, please email your inquiry to dickgreenan@outlook.com and we will try to answer your question either in this column or via email.
Try to stay dry!
Dick Greenan is chairman of the Belgrade Lakes Watershed Dams Committee. He submitted this report on June 22, 2023.
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