6.19.12 One Year Ago Flooding Ended - FOX44 - Burlington / Plattsburgh News, Weather & Sports

6.19.12 One Year Ago Flooding Ended

Lake Champlain was more well-behaved this year:

The red line shows the lake level for 2011, while the blue line and shaded area shows this year. You can see the big jump in last year's line and lake level during spring, when the combination of a snowy winter and soaked spring brought the level to 103.2 feet at its highest. Tuesday, June 19 is the one year anniversary of when the historic lake flooding ended.  There were three big things that contributed to huge differences last year to 2012:

1. Total snowfall 2010-2011 compared to snowfall 2011-2012
2. Monthly rain April 2011 compared to monthly rain April 2012
3. Monthly rain May 2011 compared to monthly rain May 2012

Let's look a the numbers of these factors, because they were drastically different in just the space of a year

     1.  Total snowfall 2010-2011:  128.4"

          Total snowfall 2011-2012:    37.7"

     2.  Monthly rain April 2011:  7.88"

          Monthly rain April 2012:  2.84"

     3.  Monthly rain May 2011:  8.67"

          Monthly rain May 2012:  4.41"

Of note, I did not include the total snowfall for Mt. Mansfield, which got dumped on! All that snow had to go somewhere too and it ended up in the Lamoille and Winooski Rivers, gradually draining into Lake Champlain. Also, the monthly rain for April and May 2011 established new records for both of those months respectively for most rain. This year was a total opposite, third-least snowiest season in Burlington and a total of nine inches less in terms of rain!

Here are some of the pictures that we have saved or viewers have sent in from last year's flooding starting with my favorite, the beaver.

My thoughts go out to those who are still feeling the affects of this flooding last year, or continuing to clean up and make changes to their homes and property. On average, the lake floods every other year. We happened to see the two extremes of it in the last two years. Last year the lake broke the previous record by more than a foot which was remarkable. This year the lake never came close to flood stage.

-Meteorologist Steve Glazier