Tropical Storm Hanna

As I am sure most of you know Tropical Storm Hanna passed very close to Durham Friday night into Saturday.  The eye was just east of us and it moved through very fast with minimal wind damage in our area.  Had the storm moved slower it would have been pretty bad!  Here are some pics from the park.  I will try to get some reference pics from normal water levels.  I have also put on some stream gauge data that is fun.

This is the Pleasant Green Rd bridge.  We have markers on the bridge to measure river height.  Usually the river is less than one foot on the park's gauge, at its crest it was well above 17 feet (where our markings end), my guess is between 19 and 20 feet.  You can see how close the water is to the bridge.

This is supposed to be the parking lot at the Pleasant Green Access.  We obviously closed this section of the park.

This sign is supposed to be on a hiking trail adjacent to a small stream, Rhodes Creek.

This is the rock crossing on the Eno Quarry Trail across Rhodes Creek.  Rhodes Creek is usuall about 15 feet wide.... In this picture it is water as far as the eye can see!  Notice the sign from the picture above.

If you have been to Eno River State Park you know the swinging bridge.  This picture was taken after the river crested.  The water is just below the bridge, at its height the bridge was underwater!!

This graph shows water flow a few miles upstream of the park.  The river went from about 5 cubic feet per second (CFS) to about 4,500 CFS!!!

At the same gauge as above the river height went from about 1.75 feet to 17 feet!!!

This gauge is just downstream from the park.  The water flow went from about 10.5 CFS to about 9,000 CFS!!

Also just down stream from the park the river lever went from about 1.75 feet to 19 feet!!!

All of this was from about 6 inches of water.  Imagine if the storm had moved through slower and dumped even more rain on the area!  Thankfully all is well at the Gwinn house and there were no major incidents in the park.