A little dicier now
I'm glad I hedged my bets in my last posting. The National Weather Service has reversed course once again and predicted a higher crest for the Susquehanna River at Harrisburg. Now it is saying the river will crest at 17.3 feet on Friday morning. That is slightly above the official Harrisburg flood stage, but well below the Shipoke flood stage of 21-22 feet. It might cause some basement flooding, however, at Race & Tuscarora Streets. And it doesn't leave much margin for error. I have a twinge of anxiety, but just a twinge.
At noon today, the river had turned brown, and tree trunks and branches were beginning to float by. But the river was still at about 5.5 feet, not even covering the sidewalk that runs along the bank. In other words, the guy in the photo at the top of this page wouldn't have his feet wet if he were standing in that same spot today. There is a lot of water yet to come. From the NOAA chart, it appears the river will start rising at about 8 p.m. tonight.
One of the deceptive things about living in a flood zone is that the weather can be nice here, or bad here, and it doesn't matter. It's the weather upstream that matters. On the Saturday before the Ivan flood hit in September 2004, the weather was sunny and warm, a truly beautiful day. We spent the day moving things from the basement and first floor to the upper floors, knowing that despite how nice it was outside, a wall of water was moving down from the north. That night, our stuff moved, we cooked off the food in our refrigerators and drank a lot. In the morning, we evacuated.